Anglicanism; lectures on the Olaus Petri Foundation

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ANGLICANISM

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ANGLICANISM

LECTURES ON THE OLAUS PETRI FOUNDATION
DELIVERED IN UPSALA DURING SEPTEMBER, 1920

BY

HERBERT HENSLEY HENSON

BISHOP OF DURHAM

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1921

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2007 with funding from

IVIicrosoft Corporation

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PREFACE

I.

These lectures were designed with the object
of assisting Swedish students to understand
the highly perplexing phenomenon which is
called Anglicanism, of which the extraordinary
character is rarely appreciated even by English
Churchmen, and which must needs present
an aspect of baiBing perplexity to foreigners.
I desired to set before my hearers a statement
which should give them the right point of view
from which to regard the version of Christianity
expressed in the law and standards of the Church
of England. I invited them to note and weigh
the influences by which modern Anglicanism
h'as been shaped and coloured. Apart from the
history the subject is wholly unintelligible, and
yet it is precisely the history which is commonly
ignored, or concealed, or misrepresented. Too
often the foreign student. Eastern or Protestant,
when he visits England in order to learn on the
spot the truth about the National Church,
falls a victim to the natural desire of Anglican

V

203

vi PREFACE

partisans of one description or another to impress
him with the notion that their own behefs and
practices are properly AngHcan. He is passed
from one party centre to another, made famiUar
with the party newspapers, introduced to the
party leaders, and familiarized with the party
phrases. In these circumstances his chances of
gaining a sound knowledge of Anglicanism are
slight, and, in point of fact, foreign students
rarely understand the Christianity of England.

When, some years ago, I accepted the invita-
tion, conveyed to me by my friend. Archbishop
Soderblom, to deliver the Olaus Petri Lectures
in Upsala, the outlook, as well ecclesiastical as
civil, was very different from that which con-
fronted me in September, 1920, when my under-
taking was at last carried out.

In the interval the Great European War
had altered the conditions of human life, and
changed the points of view from which consider-
ing men regarded the creeds and policies of
Christendom. The desire for Christian unity,
which, before the war, was only felt within the
Church of England by eccentric individuals
(who too often found themselves on that account
exposed to the censures of their fellow-Church-
men), became suddenly the prevailing sentiment.
In the Lambeth Conference it dominated the
Bishops, and found expression in the well-known

PREFACE vii

Appeal to all Christian People^ which, be its
merits or demerits what they mav, has made an
impression on the pubKc mind greater than that
of any previous AngHcan pronouncement.

Disgust with ecclesiastical divisions has gone
along with a profound, if largely irrational,
discontent with existing social and economic
conditions. The general sentiment has gathered
strength from many sources. Mortification at
the petty role assigned to Christianity in the
drama of civilized politics, compunction at the
apparent failure of the Churches to discipline
and direct the populations of Christendom, an
intense and painful realization of the chasm
which parts the sentiments, procedures, and
ideals of modern war from the morality of the
Gospel, a passionate desire at all hazards and
at any cost to get into touch with the alienated
masses — all these factors have been active and
powerful among religious people during the
last few years, and their effect is perceptible
in all directions. Within the relatively petty
world of Anglicanism we have witnessed the
rapid growth and complete triumph of anti-
national ideas. The Enabling Act of 1919,
whatever may have been the intentions of its
promoters, was in principle an Act for denation-
alizing the National Church.

At first sight, indeed, the creation of a "National

viii PREFACE

Assembly of the Church of England " might have
appeared to imply an impressive affirmation of
the national idea; and if the Enabling Act had
expressed the agreement of English Christians
as a whole the appearance would not have been
wholly misleading. North of the Tweed, the
Established Church, also confronted by the
problem of religious division, and acutely con-
scious of the public discredit which the failure
to solve that problem occasions, adopted a wiser
procedure.

The difference between the English and
Scottish Acts is worth noting. Both, indeed,
were notable assertions of " ultramontane "
principles, and to that extent were repudiations
of national authority in the ecclesiastical sphere;
but while the Scottish Act was prepared with
a view to facilitate the union of other Churches
with the Church of Scotland^ and expressed a
general agreement already secured by protracted
negotiations between the two great branches of
the Presbyterian Church, the English Enabling
Act was only concerned with the " rights " of
the Church of England, and had no reference to
the non-established Churches, whose members
were specifically and for the first time excluded
from membership in the National Church. Thus,
while the one, in spite of its exorbitant " ultra-
montanism,'' may possibly become the instrument

PREFACE ix

for bringing unity to Scottish Christianity, and
restoring a genuinely national character to the
Established Church, the other can only deepen
and stereotype the division between Anglicans
and Nonconformists by transforming the result
of an unhappy history into the expression of a
religious principle.

When the Enabling Bill was before Parliament,
the Archbishops and other advocates of the Bill
asserted repeatedly and with vehemence, as if
repelling an injurious accusation, that no change
in the national character of the Church of England
was either designed or would be effected by the
measure. But the fact remains that in principle
the Enabling Act is an Act of Disestablishment.
The newly created National Assembly is a
merely denominational body, elected (so far as
its lay members are concerned) by a fraction of
English citizens, and almost confessedly hostile
to every feature of the Establishment which
implies and secures the authority of the nation in
the ecclesiastical sphere. The formation of the
electoral rolls in the parishes must have disclosed
to the least reflecting advocates of " self-govern-
ment " the formidable character of the experi-
ment to which they have subjected the National
Church. Everywhere the numbers entered on
the rolls are surprisingly small, so small as to make
the retention of the national character, and

X PREFACE

(as some would add) the continued possession of
the ancient fabrics and endowments, a highly
anomalous circumstance.

If, indeed, the National Assembly had
regarded itself as properly charged with the
task of facilitating the working of the national
system, and had disclosed a jealous concern
for the religious rights of the English nation,
it might have served the interest of efficiency
without introducing any new and incompatible
principle into the relations of Church and State.
But the brief period of activity which the
National Assembly has enjoyed must have
sufficed to dissipate expectations of this kind.
Whatever else is doubtful about the Assembly,
its dislike of the National Establishment is not.
Its earliest legislative achievements have been
uniformly marked by a keenly denominational
intention. In the Parochial Church Councils
(Powers) Act the disestablishment of the
Church in the parishes has been virtually accom-
plished. The " parson," in the true sense of
the venerable term, has been abolished. The
parishioners as such have no longer any effective
rights in what can no longer be truly described
as "the parish church." The churchwardens
have ceased to represent the parish. The Church
of England is henceforth in the eyes of the law
a denomination, distinguished from the other

PREFACE xi

denominations by the circumstances that its
membership has been defined by Parliament,
and that it possesses the ancient religious endow-
ments of the nation. If the National Church
were formally disestablished, no further change
would be requisite in the parishes. Disendow-
ment, of course, is another matter.

This process of denationalizing the National
Church has been described as a method for
restoring to the English laity the rights which
in the course of time they have lost, but the
description implies a radical misunderstanding
of the method by which the laity have hitherto
expressed their will in the Church of England.

That will is expressed in the law, shaped and
enacted by the nation itself, which fixes the
conditions under which the parish clergyman
fulfils his ministry. The rights of the English
laity are summed up in the demand that the
English law shall be obeyed. The parish clergy-
man's liberty stands on the same foundation.
While he obeys the law, he is, as he ought always
to be, free from interference. His pastorate,
legally determined in its main activities, is ful-
filled responsibly as befits one who holds the
office of pastor, teacher, and " parson " within
the parish. Unhappily, within recent years, the
law has been deliberately broken in many parishes,
and the parishioners, justly exasperated, have

xii PREFACE

been but too easily induced to grasp at the
delusive offer of power over the clergyman
within the parish exercised not by the law
but directly by themselves. The familiar spec-
tacle of the Nonconformist denominations,
organized on a voluntary or contractual basis,
in which the minister is wholly dependent on
his congregation, has no doubt facilitated accept-
ance of the new proposal. But such local
control cannot be reconciled with national ^
establishment as we have known it in England.
By setting up in every parish a parochial Church
Council, representative, not of the parishioners
as a whole, but of that fraction of them which
is included in the parochial roll, Parliament has
only substituted one grievance for another. For
the local clique may be more offensive to the
general sentiment, and not less contemptuous
of the law, than the local parson. There are
besides objections of a grave character, none
the less grave for being easily obscured. The
lowering of the clergyman's status and the
diminution of his authority within the parish
are not likely to improve his pastoral quality,
and will certainly have an influence in discourag-
ing men of high and independent character
from offering themselves for ordination. Yet
it is the absence of such men from the ranks of
the clergy that, more than any other circum-

PREFACE xiii

stance, weakens the influence of religion in
the community and destroys the legitimate
prestige of the Church. Nor may it be assumed
that the grand object for which so heavy a price
has been paid will after all be secured by the
new arrangement. The laity under the Paro-
chial Councils Act can only appeal to the
Bishop against their law-breaking parson, and
the Bishop can only do in the future what he has
often done in the past — admonish the clergyman.
Why should it be supposed that episcopal author-
ity, which has hitherto been notoriously unable
to restrain the illegal practices of clergymen
when invoked by " aggrieved parishioners," will
be effective when invoked by the parochial
Church Councils ? Will not the plea of " Catho-
lic principle " be as valid against the National
Assembly as against the Parliament which
created it ?

11.

I have thought it worth while to publish
these lectures in England because they must
needs raise in a considering reader's mind a
question which many circumstances are forcing
into view — namely, What will be the future of
Anglicanism ?

The product of historic conditions which
have largely disappeared, dependent in its dis-

b

xiv PREFACE

tinctive features on forces and factors which are
patently failing, confronted hy hostile tendencies
which are everywhere gaining strength, Anglican-
ism, it may not unreasonably be thought, is
destined to share the fate of that Galilean version
of Christianity to which it had some obvious
resemblances, and with which from time to
time it had interesting relations. Anglicanism
was the product of the Reformation, and Gal-
licanism drew from medieval sources. The
resemblances were therefore superficial, and the
relations could not be more than occasional
and temporary; but the established systems of
Christianity, Anglican and Galilean, had this
in common, that they were determined by local
conditions, and closely bound to national politics.
It is, however, very evident that the modern
world has little use for local and national versions
of universal truths. Christianity is essentially
Catholic: civilization is becoming cosmopolitan.
It is increasingly difficult to vindicate a concep-
tion of Christianity which is national. Never-
theless, Anglicanism might have persisted for
a long time, thanks to its practical excellences
and to the strength of its roots in English history
and sentiment, had it not been for the growth
within the Church of England of a movement,
Nonjuring in the seventeenth and early eigh-
teenth centuries, Tractarian in the nineteenth,

PREFACE XV

and Anglo-Catholic in the twentieth, which is
essentially destructive of Anglican presupposi-
tions and openly contemptuous of Anglican
forms and traditions. Nonjurors were extruded
hy the power of the State, Tractarians were
repudiated hy the general sentiment of the
Church; but the Anglo-Catholics have nothing
to fear from the State which has ceased to concern
itself with ecclesiastical affairs, and they are
succeeding to a remarkable extent in shaping
the Church to their own purposes. The Enabling
Act may well have placed in their hands the
machinery for effecting a transformation of the
Church of England. That fatal measure may
perhaps be seen in the retrospect of history to
register the passing of Anglicanism.

The Anglo-Catholic Movement is marked
by enthusiasm; it is admirably organized, and
led with intelligence and resolution. That it
is gaining ground within the ranks of the clergy
cannot be doubted. It appears to have captured
the English Church Union, and possesses repre-
sentatives on the episcopal bench who are ener-
getic, courageous, and popular. Many of its
supporters are Socialists of some sort, and, as
such, possess an access to the popular mind
which is hardly within the reach of more
" orthodox '' economists. Anglo-Catholicism is
strongly established in both the ancient Universi-

xvi PREFACE

ties, and has a strong hold on the theological
colleges. It is not improbable that within a
few years the movement may become dominant
in the Lower Houses of the Convocations, and
even (though the presence of the Bishops and
the laity as independent "houses" would make
this more difficult) in the National Assembly.
In view of these considerations it becomes
important that English Churchmen should form
a just notion of this, the latest, phase of the
Tractarian revolt against the established religion
of the Church of England. Is it possible to
find in Anglo-Catholicism a satisfactory alter-
native to Anglicanism ? Has it any promise
of permanence ? Is it a logically coherent system
of faith and order ? Can it be fitted into any
ecclesiastical system which could reasonably be
expected to gain the acceptance of the mass of
English Churchmen ? Does it offer any solution
of the formidable and multiplying problems
which now embarrass the belief of educated
Christians ? Does it guarantee adequate liberty
of thought to perplexed believers, adequate
liberty of study to the scholars, adequate liberty
of teaching to the clergy ?

PREFACE xvii

III.

The Report of the First Anglo-Catholic Con-
gress^ London, 1920, published by the S.P.C.K.,
and the reports of the recent convention of
Anglo-Catholic clergy in Oxford, may, perhaps,
disclose sufficiently the distinctive beliefs, methods,
and objects of the movement.

Essentially, we see, the Anglo-Catholic theory
is a revised version of the familiar " Branch
theory " of the Tractarians. While, however,
the original form of the theory could plead large
justification in the language of Anglican divines
of the Laudian school, the revised version is
altogether unsupported by Anglican authority.
In stretching the duration of the undivided
Catholic Church from the " first six centuries,"
or the epoch of the undisputed general councils,
to so late a date as a.d. 1054, ^^ ^^ obvious that
the whole case for the English Reformation is sur-
rendered, and the work of the English Reformers
is wholly disallowed. But even this formidable
change does not suffice. The new " Branch
theory " is supplemented by an argument from
" Christian experience " which serves to authenti-
cate, explicitly or implicitly, the whole current
Roman system except the Papal Infallibility and
the Papal condemnation of Anglican orders. It
is not denied that this teaching is novel. The

xviii PREFACE

Church of England is not yet converted to its
acceptance. Thus the Rev. N. P. WiUiams said
frankly:

" It IS, of course, the case that the Catholic movement
has not yet succeeded — though we have no doubt that it
will ultimately succeed — in what is the chief of its pre-
liminary tasks on the intellectual side — that of convincing
all members of the Anglican communion that ' primitive
Christendom' cannot mean anything other than * undi-
vided pre-1054 Christendom.'"*

The difficulty is, perhaps, even greater than
Mr. Williams perceives, for even when he has
brought the English Churchman to acquiesce in
this violent breach with the tradition of the
Church of England, his task is only half performed.
The most difficult part of it remains — viz., to
demonstrate the value of this new standard of
doctrine and discipline for the purposes of a
living Church. Putting aside for the moment
the deeper questions, and looking only at the
practical aspect, can it be maintained that the
Anglo-Catholic theory is capable of providing
a principle by which effective discipline in the
Church of England can be secured ? Perhaps
a Bishop is disposed to apply this test in the
first place because he, beyond other Anglicans,
must needs be anxious to discover a remedy

* Vide Report, p. 69.

PREFACE xix

for the existing disorders which both offend
his sense of fitness and trouble his conscience.
Is there, then, in the proposal to clothe the whole
period up to a.d. 1054 with plenary Catholic
authority any real promise of a restoration of
discipline ? Shall we have at last gained a clear
and undisputed rule of Anglican practice ? I
observe that there has been, apart from the
Church of Rome, no authoritative formulation of
the precedents which that remote age provides for
modern guidance; that there exists no authority
outside the Church of Rome save the antiquarian
experts to whom the task of formulation can
reasonably be entrusted; and that the anti-
quarian experts have never yet been, and are
never likely to be, agreed among themselves.

In the event of a conflict, therefore, between
Bishop and Bishop, or Bishop and parish priest,
as to the precise content of the " Catholic
tradition " in any given case, who is to decide ?
Ex hypothesi no national authority will suffice,
and, apart from the Church of Rome, there is no
other. The proposal that the disputants should
'' appeal to a General Council " can hardly be
made seriously in view of the indisputable fact
that such a council could not possibly be con-
vened. The fact is that an unformulated tradi-
tion can never provide a basis for ecclesiastical
discipline. Individualism is none the less anarchic

XX PREFACE

because it decks out its procedures with the
solemn phraseology of Catholic usage and Divine
right.

Even if per impossibile there could be effected
a working agreement between Bishops and clergy
as to the contents of the " Catholic tradition,'^
there would still remain many matters, con-
fessedly posterior in origin to a.d. 1054, and
therefore not truly " Catholic,'' which are
passionately advocated by many Anglo-Catholics,
and justified on the ground that "Christian
experience " within the Roman Church has
demonstrated their spiritual value.

The Anglo-Catholic Movement is confessedly
Romanizing. One great advantage of recog-
nizing the authority of the Catholic Church up
to A.D. 1054 as binding on Anglicans is, we are
told, that it permits — nay, requires — an attitude
of sympathy, even of receptivity, towards every-
thing Roman. The traditional Anglican posi-
tion towards the Church of Rome is described
in terms of indignant repudiation. Thus the
Chaplain of Liddon House, London, said at the
Anglo-Catholic Conference :

" With a clear apprehension of our own Catholic status,
a clear standard of reference for our own beliefs and
practices, we could escape from a situation almost un-
bearably absurd — a situation in which Anglicans can
blink such obvious facts as that we owe almost everything

PREFACE xxi

in our ecclesiastical organization, our theological system,
and our liturgical forms, to the only Apostolic See in
Europe — a See with which it is frankly anomalous that
we should not be in communion. Do we not long for the
day when loyalty to the English Church need no longer
be identified with an antiquarian preoccupation with
' Celtic Christianity,' or even with the second year
of King Edward VI. ? Do we not long for the day
when we can get rid of a provincialism which has perhaps
been inevitable, but is essentially pedantic, and admit
quite freely that it is no condemnation of any Christian
custom to say that it is based on the experience of a
Church which has made the Faith natural and lovable
to millions of simple and saintly people, which has an
unrivalled practical knowledge of the human heart, and
to whose unwavering fidelity and devotion the con-
tinued supremacy of the Mass in Western Christendom
is directly due ? "*

This attitude of mind, at once admiring and
self-depreciatory, has, of course, facilitated the
adoption of non-Catholic (/.^., post-io^/0
Roman practices, and such adoption has been
defended by the appeal to Christian experience.
With less candour than adroitness the attempt is
made to turn a familiar Protestant argument
into a plea for Romanizing. Thus the Principal
of St. Stephen's House, Oxford, w^rites:

" It is not sufficiently realized that opposition to the
cultus of the Reserved Sacrament is inconsistent with

* Vide Report, p. ii6.

xxii PREFACE

the claim so widely urged that English Churchmen must
in nowise limit their outlook to specifically Anglican reli-
gious experience. We are constantly told that we must
be prepared to recognize the workings of the Holy Spirit
in the devotional developments of Protestant noncon-
formity. . . . But ours is a wider outlook.

" We claim an ungrudging and unequivocal recognition
for the whole of Christian experience — for the infinitely
greater part — for the Catholic part — ^as well as for those
more recent and partial developments which date from
the sixteenth century."*

It will not have escaped the reader's notice that
this writer has subtly confused two distinct and
properly unrelated factors — the universal duty
to be charitable in judging the devotional prac-
tices of other Christians, and the right of an
English Churchman to substitute Roman doc-
trines and devotional practices for those of the
Church of England. No Protestant Anglican
has ever claimed that his belief in the spiritual
value of non- Anglican methods of worship could
justify him in substituting such methods for those
prescribed by the law of the Church of England.
His judgment of other religious methods is
rightly affected by the proofs of their spiritual
value which the experience of those who use
them seems to provide, and his language in
discussing them becomes on that account more

* Vide Report^ p. 141.

PREFACE xxiii

respectful and more charitable; but he never
supposes that his personal obligation to adopt
the methods of his own Church is thereby in the
smallest degree diminished. The Anglo-Catholic
acts on the supposition that his own belief in the
spiritual excellence of modern Roman devotions
is sufficient to cancel the law of the Church of
England, to release the English clergyman from
the subscriptions which condition his tenure of
office and emolument, and implicitly to disallow
and contradict the established doctrine. This
surely cannot be harmonized with any Catholic
principle. Rather is it properly to be designated
as the merest individualism, crude, naked, anar-
chic, and unabashed.

If I understand their public declarations
rightly, the Anglo- Catholics hope to Romanize
the Church of England so effectually, that the
whole difference between the Anglican and the
Roman version of Christianity will be narrowed
down to the two points — the Pope's infallibility
and the validity of Anglican ordinations. These
points, however, they do not despair of removing,
for the first, they think, might be dealt with by
further explanations of the Vatican decree, and
the last by the " conditional ordination " of the
Anglican clergy. Then at last the long- con-
tinued feud will have been ended, and the united
Churches may raise to Heaven the victorious

xxiv PREFACE

hymn, l^e Deum Laudamus. It is this hope
of reunion with the Roman Mother that
justifies to the consciences of the Anglo-CathoKc
clergy their continuance within the AngHcan
Communion, their formal acceptance of the
Anglican standards, and their use, albeit partial,
of the Anglican formularies. They think that as
English clergymen they can the more effectually
guide the English laity out of their hereditary
Protestantism, and bring them into agreement
with the doctrines and practices of the Church
of Rome. They are setting out on the great task
of " converting " England to " Catholicism "
with the ardour of crusaders and the buoyant
confidence of visionaries. The Dean of King's
College, Cambridge, indeed, utters a note of
caution to his colleagues :

" We must realize," he says, " that the main obstacles
to reunion with Rome, which we can deal with^ and
which we are meant to deal with, lie within our own body.
It is of first importance to unify our own communion,
on a demonstrably Catholic basis, however simple and
unelaborate. Is it not just to say that lately we Catholics
have been rushing ahead so fast on the way of outward
likeness to Rome that, without rendering English Catho-
licity one whit more intelligible or attractive to the
Romans, we have run a perilous risk of rendering it utterly
unintelligible to other sections of our own communion ?
This is to defeat our dearest ends. Religious outlook
will not be rushed; at quickest, it changes with changing

PREFACE XXV

generations. Only patience succeeds here; for patience
is loving and persuades, and provokes no reaction. There
must always be diversity v^ithin the Church of England.
Ourwork is to render the diversity one within Catholi-
cism instead of letting it decline to one between Protes-
tant and Catholic."*

This is plain speaking, and cannot be misunder-
stood. The " conversion " of England by the
Anglo- Catholics is to be effected in two stages.
First, the Church of England is to be purged of
Protestantism; and, next, the purified Church
is to be reunited to its Roman Mother, from
w^hom indeed it will no longer differ in any
matter of substance. The missionaries are per-
suaded that the flowing tide is with them and
that their triumph is certain and near; much has
been already gained; the goal is even now in sight :

" The very Faith we are fighting for is being taught
by thousands of our parish priests and lived by thousands
of their faithful people. To say that the English nation
has no mind for a Church in which they find the Catholic
status and setting of the Mass, the Catholic ministry of
Penance, an eager honouring of Jesus in the Holy Sacra-
ment, an expressed devotion to the Mother of God and
all His Saints: to say that they have no mind for the at-
mosphere of sacramental life and the thrilling sense of
corporate devotion — to say all this is not a foolish extrava-
gance, it is a plain and obvious falsehood. . . .

"All over the country there is the cry to-day for the

* Vide Report^ p. 95.

xxvi PREFACE

Catholic Faith and the Catholic system; not for little
bits of it, not for a few fragments tacked on experimentally
to some new religion, but for the thing itself — the whole
thing and nothing but the thing."*

There is no secret about the objective, no
concealment of the method, no doubt about the
enthusiasm. Everything Anglican must on the
Anglo- Catholic theory be understood in a^^ Catho-
lic " sense, and everything " Catholic " must
be understood in a Roman sense, for Rome is
beyond all question " Catholic," and " Catholi-
cism " is always and everyv^here the same !
Against these assumptions nothing can be allowed
a hearing. Law, history, standards, subscrip-
tions, canons, episcopal authority — all alike lose
force and meaning. The Anglo- Catholic is
free of them all. I cannot find in the history of
the Church of England any parallel to the para-
dox presented by the Anglo- Catholic Movement.
How far is the movement likely to succeed ?
If it succeeded, and by its success the Roman
version of Christianity came again to prevail
in England, would the nation gain or lose ?
What would be the effect of the disappearance
of the Church of England by absorption into
the Church of Rome upon the object of so many
prayers and hopes — the reunion of English-
speaking Christians ?

* Vide Report, p. 122.

PREFACE xxvii

IV.

It IS not necessary to think meanly or to
speak bitterly of the Church of Rome in order
to believe that the extension of its influence in
England would be unfavourable to the best
interests of the nation, and that the restoration
of its ancient supremacy would be a grave spiritual
disaster. No educated man can be wholly
ignorant of the great though deeply shadowed
history of the Papacy; no thoughtful Christian
of any description will be little or deny the con-
tributions of Roman Christianity to the moral
and intellectual inheritance of the modern world.
Few informed or considering men will be disposed
to doubt that both within Christendom and
beyond its frontiers the Church of Rome is
rendering, and is destined to render, notable
services to mankind.

Nevertheless, the Roman version of Christ's
religion is, I must needs think, inadequate to
the needs of the modern world, and the incapacity
of the Roman Church for effective self- reforma-
tion, disastrously proved at the Councils of
Trent and the Vatican, must disqualify it ever
more plainly for the spiritual leadership of free
and civilized peoples. It retains its hold, indeed,
but only over the most backward communities
{e.g.^ the Irish, the French-Canadians, the

xxviii PREFACE

Southern Italians), and the most unlettered sec-
tions of the greater peoples, by lowering its
standards of faith and morals until they are
clearly inferior to those of the best representatives
of the non-Christian world. The moral obtuse-
ness of the devout peasantry of Ireland and the
easy acquiescence therein of the Irish hierarchy,
are facts equally melancholy, suggestive, and
humiliating.

The Mass and the Confessional, which are
the essential features of Anglo- Catholic as of
Roman Christianity, tend to create a devout
but dependent type of Christian, emotional
rather than intelligent, easily roused to fanatical
enthusiasm, but ill- fitted for responsible citizen-
ship. I say " the Mass and the Confessional "
advisedly, for these are the really important
matters which involve a specific conception of the
Christian religion — namely, that specific con-
ception which was rejected by the Reformed
Churches in the sixteenth century, and replaced
by what the Reformers conceived to be a truer
conception. History has bequeathed to us these
two conceptions of the Divine Revelation, and
they disclose their distinctiveness most evidently
in relation to the position assigned to the Ministry
within the Church.

" The Protestant religion " is the historical
description of the revised version of traditional

PREFACE xxix

Christianity which the Church of England, in
common with the other Reformed Churches,
did unquestionably accept, and does assuredly
set out in its standards and formularies. That
version was patient of many differences in
detail: it was consistent with many forms of
ecclesiastical polity; it could express itself through
various modes of worship; but its essential
identity lay in the conviction, however formu-
lated, that the old legal conception of religion
with its " sacrificing priests," saving formulae,
and mechanical disciplines was " done away in
Christ." The Reformers were men of their
own age; its distinctive errors shadowed their
minds, and led them often astray. Time has
disallowed and destroyed much of their work,
much that they swept away in the vehemence of
a great reaction has silently reclaimed its hold
on men's hearts, much that they passionately
denounced has recovered its credit in men's
regard; but on the main issue of the Reformation
we stand where they stood. The political condi-
tions which once drew to their side the whole
volume of English patriotism have changed;
and in a secularist epoch religion itself, which
to them seemed of paramount importance, falls
out of the main stream of popular interest, and
is likely to appear tiresome, petty, and irrelevant.
None the less the issue is momentous. For

XXX PREFACE

English Churchmen it has now become crucial
and pressing. We have to thank the Anglo-
Catholics for setting it before us in clear-cut
distinctness. Which of the historic versions of
the Christian religion shall the Anglican Com-
munion maintain ? Shall it continue to profess
" the Protestant religion " ? or shall it go back
on the witness of nearly four centuries, repudiate
the Reformation, and accept at the hands of its
own Anglo- Catholics that medieval version of
Christianity which has persisted in the Roman
Church in a purified form ?

V.

It is, however, often asserted and very
generally assumed in modern discussions that
the grand controversy of the Reformation is
now really exhausted, and that the old conflict of
first principles which rent Western Christendom
in twain, and filled so many sombre and terrible
pages of modern history, has at last burnt itself
out. Protestants and Catholics have ceased to
persecute one another, and learned to regard
one another's religious systems with tolerance,
and even with sympathy. Surely there can no
longer exist any adequate reason for the continued
separation of the Churches. Let me observe
in passing that this happy improvement of

PREFACE xxxi

mutual relations is practically limited to the
sphere of Protestant influence, that it is one of
the fruits of that revised version of traditional
Christianity which the Reformers were led to
effect. Religious toleration and political liberty
in the modern world are the progeny of the
Reformation, and could hardly survive that
reverence for " private judgment " which it
affirmed.

In recent discussions on Reunion, notably in
the Lambeth Conference, where such discussions
were eager and protracted, I have been much
impressed by the confidence with which it has
been affirmed, and by the readiness with which
it has been conceded, that the old issues of the
Reformation are properly obsolete, and that
nothing more is needed than patience, good
temper, tact, and mutual explanation and con-
cession to restore the visible unity of Christendom.

An example is provided in a curiously interest-
ing little book, entitled Lambeth and Reunion
(S.P.C.K., 1921), written by the Bishops of
Peterborough, Zanzibar, and Hereford, as "an
interpretation of the mind of the Lambeth
Conference of 1920." The writers have actually
persuaded themselves that " the one great diffi-
culty in the way of reunion is the Bishop,"*
and they do not despair of removing this diffi-

* p- 74

xxxii PREFACE

culty by applying the same solvent as has removed
every other :

" As we emerge from the age of materialism we are less
frightened at mystical interpretations of the visible order.
Sacraments are becoming better valued. A thing is not
necessarily to be rejected because it is involved in mystery.
We are therefore hopeful that episcopacy may yet be
studied from this, the mystical, standpoint."*

A whole chapter is devoted to an account of
the Bishop as thus interpreted. It makes odd
reading.

The Bishop, we are told, is " the human centre
of unity within the local Church"; he "stands
for continuity"; he is, "mystically interpreted,
the living human symbol of the paternal authority
of God accepted within His family the Church."
Episcopacy " is bound up with the incarnation
of the Eternal Word." " No one but a Bishop
can be a representative of the whole Church
symbolically summed up in one living person."
Such language, perhaps, would be more naturally
applied to the Pope than to the Bishop. In
either application it is quite impressively remote
from the references to Christian ministers found
in the New Testament. It is, indeed, difficult
to give it a precise meaning.

The three Bishops are extremely discontented
with the English version of episcopacy, and, of

♦ Lambeth and Reunion^ p. 78.

PREFACE xxxiii

course, it cannot be denied that the legal responsi-
bilities of an English Bishop cannot possibly be
harmonized with this picture of the Bishop as
he ought to be.

Like Liguori's description of the bonus con-
fessarius^ it provokes the question whether this
account of the bonus episcopus consists with
human nature. "We have the treasure in earthen
vessels," said S. Paul, but surely no " earthen
vessel " could satisfy the following:

" He is father of all. No matter what his training
and past experience, he is bound to inform himself of
all that is believed and taught within his diocese and in
other groups of the universal Church. He must be
prepared to minister to all groups and parties. He
must be so learned as to be competent to guide men
and women within them all. We do not mean that he
is to be a kind of Vicar of Bray. God forbid ! We
do mean that in accepting a call to the episcopate he
must wholeheartedly throw himself into the overwhelm-
ing task of acting as a true father to all within his diocese.
He must know the theological grounds of all that the
universal Church allows anywhere within its boundaries,
and must have sympathy with it. He must not allow
prejudice to make him scornful of, or hostile to, any
religious tenet or practice that is allowed its place within
any one of the groups of the reunited Church. Where
the whole Church allows disagreement, he will exercise
his freedom of choice for himself. But officially he will
serve those with whom he personally disagrees. And
in those matters that are quite unessential, matters of

xxxiv PREFACE

rites and ceremonies, he ought to be willing to act in
any congregation he is visiting as the local custom
demands. This is of the utmost importance if the
group -system is to justify itself."*

The well-intentioned essay of the three Bishops
has gone far to render the " group system "
suggested in the Lambeth Appeal, not merely
uninviting, but actually ludicrous. Their "in-
terpretation" is perilously like a reductio ad
absurdum.

Be this as it may, I am here concerned with
insisting that the controversy between the
Churches is not to be so lightly handled. We
must settle it with ourselves before we set out
to unify divided Christendom, what are our
own first principles, what, in short, is the con-
ception of Christianity which we ourselves accept.
In this connection English Churchmen may
study with advantage the Epistle to the Galatians.

Discussions about Reunion are apt to bring
the secondary factors of Christianity into undue
prominence. The concentration of thought on
questions of polity — the Papal claims, the origin,
nature, and authority of the Episcopate, the
validity of Presbyterian ordinations, the necessity
of the laying on of hands in ordination, the
legitimacy of admitting women to Holy Orders,
etc. — is likely to divert attention from those

* Lambeth and Reunion^ p. 84.

PREFACE XXXV

more fundamental questions of faith and morals
which are being everywhere raised within
Christendom, and which must finally be faced,
and in some manner answered, bv the Christian
Churches. The traditional theology is plainly
unsatisfying. The traditional morality is openly
challenged. So great has been the revolution
in human thought, and in the conditions of
human life, within recent years, that the
inherited standards of Christian belief and con-
duct are quite evidently inadequate to the re-
quirements of modern Christians. There is an
insistent and, I think, an increasing demand
for a new theology and a new casuistry. The
actual convictions of thoughtful and educated
clergy and laity are often widely discordant
from the prescribed language of the official
formularies. This language, often archaic, some-
times but too lucid, can to some extent be
explained, and to some extent fairly explained
away; but the whole process of such explana-
tion is at best a precarious method of bridging
the chasm between profession and knowledge,
and it may easily become actually demoralizing.
The leaders of the Churches cannot much
longer avoid the necessity of reconsidering their
official creeds and confessions, and determining
within what limits departures from the tradi-
tional belief may be rightly made by the laity,

xxxvi PREFACE

and rightly proclaimed by the clergy. It is
characteristic of our time that the moral code
of Christianity is as vehemently challenged as
the traditional theology.

Sexual morality is for the moment chaotic;
the moral implications of economic life are
obscure and confused. The war has raised
many new questions, and given a terrible emphasis
to many old ones. The authorities of the
Christian Churches cannot much longer postpone
or evade the necessity of facing these primary
questions.

The Bishops, even if (which is incredible)
they do not themselves share the doubts and
perplexities which are troubling the minds of
their religious contemporaries, cannot ignore the
signs oj the times. They must see, what only
blindness can fail to see, that we are on the brink
of a mortal struggle between the secularist and
the religious interpretations of human nature
and human duty, in which the very continuance of
Christianity in any coherent and morally effective
form will be brought into debate, and those
principles of human intercourse which are the
indispensable substructures of any genuinely
civilized society will be challenged. The Bishops
cannot ignore or disclaim their incommunicable
responsibility. They dare not forget that both
the specific pledges of their consecration to the

PREFACE xxxvii

Episcopate, and the evident obligations of their
position, pledge them to undertake the champion-
ship of the Church's faith and morality. When,
therefore, they shall take in hand this most
solemn and difficult task, everything will turn on
the conception of Christianity which they, and
the Church which they govern, have accepted.
The Anglo-Catholic, confronted by the chal-
lenge which the modern world offers to tradi-
tional Christianity, is as confident as he is plainly
helpless. He uses a language unintelligible out-
side his own circle, and discloses a mentality so
remote from that of his opponents as to make
mutual understanding impossible. Of what real
service can it be to meet the doubts of an educated
modern Christian with the assurance that " the
Catholic creeds and conciliar definitions may be
relied upon as representing the nearest approach
to absolute truth which finite minds are capable
of apprehending" ?* Who can repress a melan-
choly smile when gravely assured that

" if we take what was actually taught by it (the Church)
during the undivided period, and still is taught in common
by the two greatest of Christian bodies — the Roman
Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox — as authoritative,
we shall find that we have a perfectly definite and coherent
body of information about God, man, our destiny in the
next world, and the way of salvation in this "?*j*

* Vide Report, p. 64. f Ibid.y p. 6j.

xxxviii PREFACE

The remoteness from any apprehension of the
modern situation which such language discloses
is, perhaps, even more distressing than the
futility of the actual affirmations. How the
Roman Church would handle the problem of
modern doubt has been sufficiently disclosed
in the history of the Modernists.

VI.

I must needs think, therefore, that the Anglo-
Catholic Movement cannot possibly provide a
satisfactory alternative to the Anglicanism which
it is so busily engaged in destroying. More-
over, while its success in this work of destruc*
tion may not improbably be considerable, I do
not believe it can replace Anglicanism in the
acceptance of English laymen. So long, indeed,
as the Church of England continues to be in
name and legal status the National Church,
there will be little disposition to enquire too
closely into the policies and procedures of its
members, for the generous assumption that a
National Church ought to include many types
of Christianity is firmly rooted in English minds.
With the severance of the historic link between
Church and State — a contingency which no
considering Anglican can now regard as improb-
able or remote — this tolerant theory will be

PREFACE xxxix

subjected to a strain which it will hardly survive.
For tolerance may easily be mistaken for approval.
No doubt there are eclectic congregations in
London and other large towns, and small coteries
of lay- folk in many parishes throughout the
country, which have adopted Anglo-Catholic
beliefs and practices, read the Church Times,
and can be counted upon for " demonstrations.''
But no one who has any direct and extended
knowledge of the national life will suppose that
these are representative of the general body of
lay Churchmen. English religion is still, as for
more than three centuries it has always been,
Protestant to the core, and no religious appeal
which ignores that fact will win the acceptance
of the general body of English people. English
religion, however, is now far less closely connected
with ecclesiastical interests than in the past.
The parish churches, which become distasteful
to the Protestant laity, are quietly abandoned.
In parish after parish Anglo-Catholicism has
the field to itself. In the event of disestab-
lishment and disendowment, I think the Anglo-
Catholic Movement will be discovered to have
a very slight hold on the country.

I think that in the future, as in the past,
Anglicanism must justify itself on the principles
of the Reformation. I believe that the religious
crisis of our time can only be handled successfully

xl PREFACE

in the spirit, at once conservative and courageous,
which led the EngUsh Reformers to bring the
established medieval system of faith, worship,
and discipline to the test of the New Testament.
In the New Testament, now as then, we must find
the unalterable first principles of Christianity.
The task to which the modern Church is called
is to harmonize those first principles with the
accumulated knowledge of the modern world.
It is a task both novel and familiar, novel because
all the circumstances of human life are bewilder-
ingly unlike those of the past, familiar because
such harmonizing is the requirement of every
revolutionary age. Christ's religion is no stereo-
typed system of thought and conduct, but a
Divine power in human hearts and lives. It
carries always the principle of adaptation, assimi-
lation, absorption, growth, progress — in a word,
the principle of life. " The Lord is the Spirit :
where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.''
Believing this, it follows inevitably that I
regard with sympathy and confidence the policy
of drawing the Church of England into closer
fellowship with the other Reformed Churches.
I welcomed the resolutions of the Lambeth
Conference with respect to the Church of Sweden,
and rejoiced that my visit to Upsala, for the
purpose of delivering the Olaus Petri Lectures,
happened to coincide with the Consecration of

PREFACE xli

Bishops in Upsala Cathedral, and so made it
possible for me to join with the Bishop of Peter-
borough in representing the Anglican Communion
on a memorable occasion. I can never forget
the stately and moving ceremonial, the vast con-
gregation, the fraternal behaviour of the Swedish
ecclesiastics, and the generous hospitality of the
Archbishop.

I noted with pleasure during some pleasant
weeks in Sweden many indications of goodwill
to the Church of England. Not the least signifi-
cant of these is the tendency among Swedish
scholars to make themselves familiar with English
ecclesiastical history and institutions. Among
such scholars, I take leave to mention my friends,
the Rev. Samuel Gabriellson and the Rev. Yngve
Brillioth, who have already done much to make
Anglicanism intelligible to Swedish Churchmen.
I am persuaded that the closer intercourse
between the National Churches of England and
Sweden will be greatly beneficial to both. Their
co-operation could not fail to be widely advan-
tageous to religion.

HERBERT DUNELM.

Auckland Castle,
August, 1 92 1.

CONTENTS

LECTURE PAGE

PREFACE - - - - V

I. HISTORIC CONDITIONS OF MODERN ANGLI-
CANISM - - - - I

II. THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND - "37

III. PURITANISM - - " •■ 75

IV. THE ROMAN CONTROVERSY - -IIO

V. EPISCOPACY - - - - i^g

VI. THE ESTABLISHMENT - - - 1^8

VII. THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE - - 234

xliii

LECTURE I

HISTORIC CONDITIONS OF MODERN
ANGLICANISM

In these lectures I do not propose to give, even
in brief outline, a history of the Church of Eng-
land, nor shall I attempt to explain in detail its
legal and constitutional system, though it will be
necessary both to refer to the history and to
indicate the salient features of the system. My
object is to help you to understand the form of
Christianity which is commonly called Angli-
canism, and which, though originating within
the island of Great Britain, and largely shaped
in its expression by insular conditions, has been
carried far over the world by the English race,
and now constitutes an important factor in the
sum of organized Christianity.

A just estimate of modern Anglicanism is only
possible on the basis of a sound knowledge of the
history and constitution of the Mother Church;
and, conversely, a right understanding of the
actual situation within the Mother Church must
give an important place to the Daughter Churches
which within little more than two centuries

2 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM i

have grown up within the British Empire, in the
United States of America, and beyond the fron-
tiers of Christendom.

Christianity in England as elsewhere has been
affected by conditions of time, place, and ethnical
type. What is called the " insularity " of Angli-
canism bears its origin on its face. It sprang
from the physical fact that Great Britain is an
island, and has been on that account affected less
directly by the forces and tendencies which have
shaped European Christianity. Everything in
England arrived later, and operated with lessened
vigour, leaving a larger opportunity of survival to
local factors. It is, indeed, difficult to exaggerate
the far-reaching consequences of this circumstance
of English history in Church and State. The
character of the people has been coloured by their
isolation : the strength of their prejudices has been
increased, and an attitude of aloofness, which
might even be described as supercilious, has been
fostered. Something must certainly be attributed
to the circumstance that the English in Britain
were immigrants, and that they brought with
them both their women and their gods. The
natural hostility of the British provincials was
deepened by the difference of religion. Making
all due allowance for the inevitable intercourse
with the native British, it appears to be certain
that, when S. Augustine landed at Ebbsfleet

I HISTORIC CONDITIONS 3

in 597, the English were everywhere pagans.
Unlike the Teutonic conquerors of Gaul, Spain,
and Italy, the conquerors of Britain were not
absorbed in the mass of their subjects. But,
though they brought both wives and worships
to their new homes, it is certain that the mere
process of migration had enfeebled their ancestral
religion. For that had had its strength in local
associations — holy places, wells, trees, and hills —
which could hardly be transplanted with the idols
and priests. The rapid success of the Christian
missionaries must in part be explained by the
loosening of religious '' use- and- wont " which
had taken place among the English. When at a
later period the Gospel was presented to the
kindred races in their original homes, a far more
obstinate and protracted opposition was offered;
and the sword, which in England was little used,
if used at all, was in Saxony and Frisia employed
unsparingly. It is not wholly negligible that
English Christianity had a composite origin.
The apostles of England were not sent from a
single Church, nor did they represent a single
type of Christianity. The Roman and Irish
evangelists laboured independently, and, if their
labours did not mature in the creation of two
rival Churches, the result was largely owing to
the political prudence which preferred a connec-
tion with Rome, the home of culture and sacred

4 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM i

learning, to permanent identification with the
semi- barbarous Christianity of Ireland.

Two circumstances of the English conversion
left their impression on the Church of England,
an impression which can still be traced : the
missionaries were mostly volunteers acting with
little if any reference to ecclesiastical authority,
and they were for the most part monks. S. Augus-
tine was, indeed, anything but a volunteer.
He went forth reluctantly at the peremptory
bidding of Pope Gregory, and the work from the
Church which he established in Canterbury was
always held closely to the Roman See; but over
the greater part of the country that work did not
penetrate. The Irish missions were essentially
individual ventures, and to them, not to Rome
or Canterbury, the Christianity of Northern
and Central England is due. East Anglia was
converted by the Burgundian Felix, who offered
himself to S. Augustine for the work. Birinus,
the Apostle of the West Saxons, is said to have
been advised by Pope Honorius to attempt the
conversion of those English to whom the Gospel
had not yet penetrated, but he seems to have
maintained no official connection either with
Rome or with Canterbury. These separate and
disconnected missions worked in a country divided
into tribal kingdoms, which were continually at
war, and among which the balance of power was

I HISTORIC CONDITIONS 5

continually shifting. The missionary commonly
attached himself in the first instance to the court
of the tribal king, whose conversion was followed
almost as a matter of course by that of his tribes-
men, and whose kingdom became the diocese
of the missionary Bishop. The great extent
and irregular frontiers of the older English
bishopricks are explained by these circumstances.
They perpetuated into the nineteenth century
the geographical arrangements of the Heptarchy.
Even when Archbishop Theodore divided the
original sees, he seems to have been careful to
follow tribal boundaries. During the last century
most of the older bishopricks have been subdivided
in order to increase the number of Bishops, but
throughout the greater part of its history the
Church of England has been governed by a small
number of Bishops governing large dioceses.
Bishop Stubbs has pointed out the importance of
the fact that the original missionaries were almost
invariably monks :

" The conversion of England was accomplished prin-
cipally, if not entirely, by monks either of the Roman or
of the Irish school; and thus the monastic institution
was not, as among the earlier converted nations, an inno-
vation which rested its claim for reverence on the sanc-
tity or asceticism of its professors: it was coeval with
Christianity itself; it was the herald of the Gospel to
kings and people, and added the right of gratitude to

6 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM i

that of religious respect or superstitious awe. Hence the
system occupied in England and in the countries con-
verted by English missionaries a position more really
honourable and better maintained than elsewhere.
Although the monasteries of France and Italy were larger
and politically more powerful than those of England, they
did not enjoy the same place in the affections of the
people, nor were they either so purely national, or
nurseries of patriotic spirit in the same way."*

An interesting relic of monasticism survives
to this day in the cathedrals of the new Founda-
tion— that is, the cathedrals which before the
Reformation were monastic, and which the policy
of Henry VIII. reconstituted.

" The monastic cathedral was an institution almost
peculiar to England. The missionary- bishop, himself a
monk, accompanied by a staff of priests who were also
monks, settled in the chief city of a kingdom or province.
He built his church ; his staff of missionary monks became
the clergy of that church; the church itself was called a
monastery. As the mission work prospered the popula-
tions of the larger towns were converted, and settled
clergy who were not monks undertook the spiritual
charge of them. In time the overgrown dioceses were
divided. The principal church of the district became
the seat of a bishop, who might or might not be a monk,
but who found his episcopal chair placed for him in a
church which was of older foundation than itself, and

* Vide Historical Introductions to the Rolls Series^ by
William Stubbs, p. 366.

I HISTORIC CONDITIONS 7

which possessed a character that he ought not and perhaps
had not power to infringe. The longer the subdivision
of the original diocese was delayed, the more certain was
the new bishop to find himself surrounded by a staff of
secular city clergy. His cathedral continued to be an
establishment of secular clerks, and when the name and
usage of canonical life came into fashion they took, as
a matter of course, the name of canons. In this way it
happened that, whilst the newly founded sees of Anglo-
Saxon bishops were placed in secular churches, the
original settlements of the first missionary - bishops
retained a monastic character."*

Another consequence of the exceptional im-
portance of monasticism in the foundation of
the Church of England is to be traced in the
number and poverty of the vicarages, and in the
considerable amount of tithe held by lay- impro-
priators. It would hardly be extravagant to
ascribe the distinctive features of the English
Reformation — its constitutional character, the
retention of Episcopacy, and the Royal Supremacy
— to the same cause. For the number and wealth
of the monasteries exposed them to public obloquy
at the very time when their extra- national
organization offended the patriotic sentiment
of the nation, and their devotion to the Papacy
committed them to the least respectable factors
of the older system. Their fall so weakened
the spiritual estate in Parliament and Convoca-
* Vide ibid,, p. 371.

8 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM i

tion that it could offer no effectual resistance to
the Reformation, and their confiscated property-
placed a weapon in the hands of Henry VIII.
which was more potent than any arguments of
his theologians. It is significant that the Catholic
reaction under Mary had to include a recogni-
tion of the property arrangements effected by the
Dissolution of the monasteries.

The political development told with decisive
effect on the history of the Church. When
William the Norman struck down the old English
monarchy at Senlac (1066), he brought the
Church of England under the influence of the
religious revival which, originating in Cluny, had
transformed the Papacy, and was spreading
rapidly throughout Western Christendom. The
old intimacy of Church and State, derived from
the circumstances of the original conversion, was
incompatible with the new conception of the
clerical character and function. No doubt it
had consisted with, and even fostered, a low
standard of clerical living, but it had avoided
some of the disadvantages of the sharply defined
dualism required by the clerical theory. When
William issued a mandate for the separate con-
stitution of the ecclesiastical courts, he definitely
disallowed the earlier practice of the English
Church as incompatible with " the decrees of the
sacred canons." At the same time he opened

I HISTORIC CONDITIONS 9

the door to the long controversy between the civil
and spiritual jurisdictions, which continued in
varying degrees of intensity until it was finally
ended by the legislation of Henry VIII. At
the time the Monarchy found in the spiritual
estate its natural ally against the recalcitrant
patriotism of the English people, and the turbu-
lent individualism of the Norman barons. The
great legislating and organizing Sovereigns of
the twelfth century, Henry I. (1100-1135) and
Henry 11. (1154-1187), drew their principal
lawyers and administrators from the ranks of the
clergy, and tightened their hold over the hier-
archy by systematically promoting their agents to
episcopal office. Mainly, throughout the earlier
period, the Church stood with King and People
against the Baronage in the interest of social
order; and when, in the person of John (1199-
12 16), the Kingship ceased to be the instrument
of social order, the Church took a leading place
in the movement which secured Magna Carta
(12 1 5). That movement may very fairly be
described as national, and in the tradition of the
English nation. Magna Carta has always borne the
character of a supreme national act. There is,
indeed, little in the document itself to justify
this view, but, though in form Magna Carta is
strictly feudal, and though its actual provisions
do not go beyond accepted feudal procedure, its

10 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM i

spirit is large, and the circumstances in which it
was secured gave it a unique significance. The
first clause granted freedom to the Church of
England :

" In primis concessisse Deo et hac praesenti carta
nostra confirmasse, pro nobis et haeredibus nostris in
perpetuum quod Anglicana ecclesia libera sit, et habeat
jura sua Integra, et libertates suas illaesas."

The clause proceeds to specify freedom of elec-
tions, " quae maxima et magis necessaria repu-
tatur ecclesiae Anglicanae." Of the counsellors
named in Magna Carta as advising the King to
grant it the first was Stephen Langton, an English-
man who had been appointed to the Primacy by a
masterful assertion of papal authority, and who,
as a Roman Cardinal and Legate, might seem
ill- fitted to represent the national character of
the English Church. If, indeed, the Papacy
had continued to assist the popular cause, the
ecclesiastical significance of Magna Carta might
never have been greater than that of other similar
concessions to clerical demands. But, in point
of fact, the Papacy speedily reversed its policy,
and, for the brief remainder of John's reign and
throughout the long reign of his son, allied itself
generally with the Crown against the Nation.
The effect of this grave and sustained conflict
of interest between the Papacy and the English

I HISTORIC CONDITIONS ii

people was considerable and permanent. It
was increased hy the elaborate provisions for en-
forcing the Charter hy ecclesiastical censures.
A fourteenth- century casuistic manual, known as
Pupilla Oculi^ after quoting Archbishop Boniface's
sentence of excommunication against those who
infringed the provisions of Magna Carta, adds the
significant ^comment : " Hos articulos ignorare
non debent quibus incumbit confessiones audire
infra provinciam Cantuariensem." When we
remember that the hearing of confessions passed
largely into the hands of the friars during the
thirteenth century, and that the friars were
generally sympathetic with the popular politics
of the age, we can easily understand that the
Charter acquired in their hands a considerable
ecclesiastical importance. The expression " ec-
clesia Anglicana " was itself sufficiently am-
biguous to admit of a variety of interpretation.
Mr. McKechnie, the author of the leading
English commentary on Magna Carta, thus
comments on the phrase :

" It is interesting to note that, where the charters
of Henry II. and earlier kings spoke of * holy church,'
Magna Carta speaks of ecclesia Anglicana, When
English Churchmen found that the tyrant, against whom
they made common cause with English barons and
townsmen, received sympathy and support from Rome,
the conception of an English church that was something

12 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM i

more than a mere branch of the church universal began
to take a clearer shape. The use of the words ecclesia
Anglic ana may indicate, perhaps, that under the influence
of Stephen Langton, English Churchmen were beginning
to regard themselves as members of a separate community,
that looked for guidance to Canterbury rather than to
Rome. John was now the feudal dependent of the
Holy See, and the * liberty of the English church ' had
to be vindicated against the King and his lord para-
mount; the phrase had thus an anti -papal as well as an
anti-monarchical bearing."*

No medieval Churchman, indeed, v^ould have
conceived the notion of a national church v\^hich
repudiated the spiritual authority of the Apostolic
See, but much may be implicit v^hich is neither
perceived nor desired, and it is not extravagant
to think that the phrase, " ecclesia Anglicana,"
silently acquired in English minds, under the
conditions of the national history, a significance
which originally and necessarily it did not possess.
John, surely one of the meanest tyrants of his-
tory, was transfigured by the anti- papal prejudice
of the Reformers until he wore the aspect of a
champion of English liberty against the Pope.
He was even pictured as an early Henry VIII.
attempting a religious reformation. " How was
our King John," writes Tyndale, " forsaken of his
own lords, when he would have put a good and
godly reformation in his own land." Jewell

* 'Sxdi^ Magna Cartas pp. 191, 192 (Glasgow, 1914).

I HISTORIC CONDITIONS 13

transformed the pusillanimous monarch who had
become the Pope's liegeman into the innocent
victim of the Pope's malignant hatred ! Shake-
speare threw the lustre of his incomparable genius
over the legend of theological prejudice when he
made King John the mouthpiece of the proud
independence which marked the Elizabethan
Englishman. To the demand of the papal legate
the King replies :

" Thou canst not, cardinal, devise a name
So slight, unworthy, and ridiculous,
To charge me to an answer, as the pope.
Tell him this tale; and from the mouth of England
Add thus much more, — ^That no Italian priest
Shall tithe or toll in our dominions;
But as we under heaven are supreme head,
So, under him, that great supremacy,
Where we do reign, we will alone uphold,
Without the assistance of a mortal hand :
So tell the pope; all reverence set apart,
To him, and his usurp'd authority."

King Philip interposes with a protest, and is
answered by another outburst of anti-papal
sentiment :

^* Though you, and all the kings of Christendom,
Are led so grossly by this meddling priest,
Dreading the curse that money may buy out;
And, by the merit of vile gold, dross, dust.
Purchase corrupted pardon of a man.
Who, in that sale, sells pardon from himself;

14 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM i

Though you, and all the rest, so grossly led,
This juggling witchcraft with revenue cherish ;
Yet I, alone, alone do me oppose
Against the pope, and count his friends my foes."

This was, no doubt, the way in which the Eliza-
bethan Englishman looked upon Henry VIII. ,
and Shakespeare in crediting such sentiments to
the earlier tyrant was " playing to the gallery."

The friction between Church and State arising
from the conflict of jurisdictions throughout
Christendom was intensified in England by the
course of political history. During the minority
of Henry III. the authority of the Papacy within
England reached its highest point; and precisely
then the temptation to abuse it in the interest
of the papal "war- chest" was strongest, for the
struggle with the Hohenstaufen then reached its
decisive phase. The papal victory was more
apparent than real, for the prestige of the Papacy
received a mortal wound. The papal policy was
deplorably secularized, and the financial exactions
rendered necessary by the cost of the conflict
aroused in England a deep and lasting resent-
ment. When, in the fourteenth century, the
weakened Papacy fell under French control,
and for many years was actually established
at Avignon (i 309-1 376) within the French do-
minions, the anti- papal feeling in England asso-
ciated itself with patriotic sentiment, and with

I HISTORIC CONDITIONS 15

the reforming movement led by Wycliffe. While
England and France were waging the Hundred
Years' War, the Father of Christendom was, to
all intents and purposes, a French prelate. Just
then when the moral prestige of the Papacy had
fallen to the lowest point, the supremacy of the
Papacy within Christendom was asserted in the
highest terms. The Clericis Laicos Bull issued
by Boniface VIII. in 1296 was a direct challenge
to the secular power, for it placed under ex-
communication all who imposed taxes on clerical
property and on all who consented to pay them.
Monarch and nation were agreed in resisting such
an assumption of authority, for not only did it
limit the allegiance of a numerous body of sub-
jects, but it dislocated intolerably the financial
system of the kingdom by exempting from taxa-
tion a vast mass of property. Accordingly,
Edward I. met the publication of the Bull by the
drastic but logical step of outlawing the clergy
and seizing the temporalities of the Archbishop
of Canterbury. A series of statutes passed in the
course of the fourteenth century disclosed the
hostile attitude which the English State had
taken up against the Papal See. The Statutes
of Carlisle (1307), Provisors (1351 and 1390), and
Praemunire (1353 and 1393) restrained the exercise
of papal patronage, prohibited suits at Rome,
disallowed papal exactions, and placed under

i6 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM i

penalty of outlawry and confiscation all who
violated their enactments. Henry VIII. was able
to clothe his innovations with a legal and consti-
tutional aspect, because he found ready to his
hand this body of anti- papal legislation, which
not only put the spiritual estate within his power,
but made it possible for him to justify his theory
of the Royal Supremacy in the language of an
ancient statute.

Nor was this all. Henry VIII. could count
on an anti-papal tradition in the minds of the
people, a tradition which had gone far beyond the
political and financial issues with which Parlia-
ment had concerned itself, and had challenged
the assumptions on which the vast fabric of
medieval religion was built. The Lollard move-
ment inaugurated by John Wycliife {ob. 1384)
reached formidable dimensions at the end of
the fourteenth, and the beginning of the fif-
teenth century, when it was suppressed with some
severity. Its association with the social dis-
content which had flamed out in Wat Tyler's
rebellion discredited it in the view of the governing
classes, and induced them to assist the more active
dislike of the hierarchy, but, though officially
suppressed, it persisted in the humbler ranks of
society, and was unquestionably one of the forces
which paved the way for the Reformation. ^' Even
when its first violence was subdued," observes

I HISTORIC CONDITIONS 17

Dr. Gairdner, " LoUardy remained a latent power
in the community. Its leaven, indeed, was very
widely diffused. Its teachings, for good and
evil, have influenced human thought and action
more or less through all succeeding centuries.
They mingled with and domineered over the Re-
formation, though they did not bring it on."*

The distinctive notes of the Reformation are
all present in the movement of the Lollards —
the insistence on Scripture as the final criterion
of the ecclesiastical tradition, the hatred of
monasticism, the scorn for the popular devotions,
the special denunciation of the Mass, the emphatic
assertion of " the priesthood of the laity." Copies
of Wycliffe's Bible in many editions were widely
dispersed, and thus was created a popular interest
in the Scriptures, and the suspicion was fixed in
the popular mind that the ofiicial hostility to
vernacular versions of the sacred literature was
occasioned by a less respectable reason than a
scholarly zeal for accuracy or a pastoral concern
for the spiritual welfare of the readers. Arch-
bishop Arundel held a convocation in S. Paul's
Cathedral " contra hereticos " in January, 1408,
and issued a series of " constitutions." Of these
the seventh may be quoted as an excellent example
of the attitude of the medieval hierarchy towards
Bible reading:
* Vide Lollardy and the Reformation in England^ i. 100.

1 8 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM i

" Since it is a perilous thing, as S. Jerome testifies, to
render the text of Holy Scripture out of one language
into another, because in the translations themselves it is
not easy to preserve the sense unaltered, as the said
S. Jerome confesses, albeit he was inspired, that he him-
self often went astray herein : We enact and ordain that
henceforward no one may render any text of Holy
Scripture into the English or any other language in book,
pamphlet, or tract; nor may any such book, pamphlet, or
tract recently composed in the time of the said John
Wyclif or since, or hereafter to be composed, be read in
part or in whole, publicly or secretly, under penalty of
the greater excommunication, until the said translation
has been approved by the diocesan bishop, or, if the
matter so require, by a provincial council: let the man
who acts contrary to this constitution be punished as a
supporter of heresy and error."*

The Act De comburendo heretico (1401) had
placed a weapon in the hands of the hierarchy
which it was not indisposed to use, and though
the extreme penalty was exacted in comparatively
few instances, they were enough to associate
persecution and official orthodoxy in the popular
imagination, and to create a tradition of cruelty
which would weigh heavily on the reputation of
the Bishops in the next age. England at the close
of the Middle Ages possessed a strong monarchy,
a highly developed national consciousness, a
tradition of anti- papal prejudice, a statute-book
containing stern laws against papal aggression,
* Vide Wilkins, Concilia^ vol. iii. 317.

I HISTORIC CONDITIONS 19

and a popular undercurrent of iconoclastic evan-
gelicalism. The ecclesiastical system retained
the features which had been stamped on it at
the original conversion. The land was covered
with monasteries, and the bishopricks were few
in number and extensive in area.

Beside all other factors, however, and, perhaps
more potent than them all, was the personal
influence of the Tudor Sovereigns themselves.
Henry VIII. and his three children, who succes-
sively occupied his throne, were no lay figures or
mere symbols. Even the boy-king Edward VI.
was by no means a negligible quantity; and his
unhappy elder sister, Mary, by her fanatic
violence, did more than himself to deepen and
perpetuate the religious changes which he so
ardently promoted and she so cordially hated.
Henry VIII. and Elizabeth took the direction of
ecclesiastical affairs largely into their own hands,
and modern Anglicanism bears still the impress of
their masterful and enigmatic personalities. The
great Queen avowedly modelled her policy on that
of her father, whom in mental type and tempera-
ment she closely resembled. Henry VIII. himself
was the original and determining personal factor
in the mingled process of the English Reforma-
tion. He was a thoroughly typical product of
the Renaissance. He has been described as

20 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM i

" Machiavelli's Prince in action," and the de-
scription is not unjustified. Carefully trained
and endowed with high abilities, he would
certainly have made a great figure in any case,
but in the extraordinary circumstances of his
age he played a role which has no equivalent in
any country. " Henry's unique position among
English kings," says Dr. Gairdner, " is owing to
the extraordinary degree of personal weight that
he was able to throw into the government of the
realm." He was genuinely religious, though his
religion had little effect on his personal morals,
and he was keenly interested in theological
controversy. His considerable abilities went along
with an exorbitant vanity, which had been
fostered by the circumstances of his earlier life.
Success developed the baser sides of his masterful
character, and his later years present the picture
of a cruel despot such as the pen of Suetonius
has delineated in the person of Domitian. His
violent passions argued no kindness of heart.
There has hardly lived any man more cold-
hearted and indifferent to personal claims.
Archbishop Cranmer was, perhaps, the only
instance among the many eminent and devoted
public servants whom he employed in his service
of a man for whom he had a genuine personal
regard. His conception of the royal prerogative
grew ever more extravagant, and, though he

I HISTORIC CONDITIONS 21

never actually invaded the sphere of the spiritual
ministry, he spoke and acted,^

to be, in the fullest sense of the extraYagant vj^
term, the Head of Christ's Church within his ■
dominions. All these personal traits, good and
bad alike, were reflected in his ecclesiastical policy.
Professor Pollard has poihteST out the mutually
irreconcilable character of those descriptions of
this monarch which both belittle his personal
quality and magnify his personal influence :

" Our account of Henry VIII. must be an answer to
the problem presented by his reign, and we must explain
how it came about that he was allowed to do the things
he did. From a worldly point of view he was perhaps
the most successful of English kings. He achieved nearly
everything he tried to achieve, and his work was no mere
transient triumph. It has lasted to this day, and become
part and parcel of England as we know it. He broke the
bonds of Rome; he subjected the Church to the State; he
destroyed the Monasteries; he completed the union
between England and Wales; he defeated the French
and the Scots; he developed the parliamentary system;
he extended and reformed English dominion in Ireland;
he built up the English navy; he flouted both Empire and
Papacy, and crushed with comparative ease the only revolt
which Englishmen ventured to raise up against him."*

If we enquire what induced this potent and
amazing Sovereign to put himself at the head of
the Reformation in England, we must answer
* Vide Factors in Modern History^ p. 80.

22 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM i

without hesitation that it was his squalid quarrel
with the Papacy over the divorce from Catherine
of Aragon. That was the precise degree of impor-
tance which belongs to the episode. It is wholly
impossible to suppose that the Reformation
would not in any case have taken place in England
and established itself there; but apart from the
divorce which gave Henry an urgent personal
motive for breaking with the Papacy, it is difficult
to think that he would have taken any other view
of the agitation for Reform than that which was
taken by his brother-sovereigns, Charles V. and
Francis I. His training and instincts were not
likely to predispose him in favour of ecclesiastical
revolution. He had committed himself in con-
troversy by his book against Luther, and he lay
under some personal obligation to the Popes, from
whom he had received the famous title, " De-
fender of the Faith." His personal orthodoxy
remained unshaken to the end of his life, and his
lofty conception of Monarchy suited ill with
the levelling tendencies of the Reformed doctrine.
Once carried into the position of accepting the
breach with Rome, he gave to the Reformation
in his kingdom a conservative and constitutional
character, which had little in common with the
revolutionary course which it pursued elsewhere.
Henry VIII., being personally destitute of any
desire to alter either the doctrine or the practice

I HISTORIC CONDITIONS 23

of the Church beyond the point rendered neces-
sary by the breach with the Pope, effected the in-
dependence of the Church of England in advance
of its Reformation.'* He may be fairly described
as the Founder of the National Establishment.
Herein he did but carry to its logical conclusion
the long controversy between the English State
and the Roman Papacy, and gave complete ex-
pression to the proud self- consciousness of the
English nation. The destruction of the monas-
teries was rendered unavoidable when once the
national character of the English Church had been
affirmed, for they were international institutions
and were vitally bound to the medieval system
which had its centre in Rome. The property of
the dissolved foundations was required for the
replenishing of the royal treasury, and for the
bribing of the nobles to an acceptance of the royal
policy. It may, indeed, be doubted if Henry
could have maintained the severely conservative
position which he took up in his last years, and
there is some reason for thinking that he was
actually contemplating a more liberal policy at
the time of his decease, but he had lived long
enough to give firmness to the national system

* C/. Gasquet, Edward VI. and the Book of Common
Prayer^ p. 40: " So long as Henry lived the English
Church, although deprived of some dignity and strength,
in her outward appearance remained unchanged."

24 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM i

which he had established, and the doctrinal
changes which followed did not alter his handi-
work. Professor Meyer has well emphasized the
distinctness of the two phases of the process by
which the reformed Church of England took
shape :

" The distinction between the reformation and the
institution of a state church must be more sharply drawn
in English than in German history. In England, the two
things are quite separate in point of time, origin, and
sphere of action. The establishment of a national
church was the offspring of the late middle ages and was
political in its origin, while its sphere of action was con-
fined to Great Britain. The English reformation, on
the other hand, only started after the national church had
become an accomplished fact, x.^., about the middle of
the sixteenth century, and it ran its course well into the
second half of the seventeenth. It was religious in its
origin, and had a worldwide importance. . . .

" The English national church existed in fact long
before the formal separation from Rome. The act of
Henry VI 11. in disowning the pope was 'not so much
the beginning of a fresh development as the end of an
old: it is rather the keystone of anglicanism than the
foundation-stone of the reformation."*

Lord Macaulay, in a famous essay marked, per-
haps, beyond any other by the violent prejudices
which disfigured his historical writings, fastened

* Vide England and the Catholic Church under Queen
Elizabeth^ by Arnold Oskar Meyer, authorized translation
by Rev. J. R. McKee (London, 1916).

I HISTORIC CONDITIONS 25

on the same fact as giving the key to Anglicanism.
Everywhere else, he says, " the contest against
the papal power was essentially a religious con-
test," and everywhere else, though self-seeking
and ambitious men joined in the movement, and
were even welcomed as allies, the authors and
leaders of the Reformation were religious men
who " redeemed great infirmities and errors by
sincerity, disinterestedness, energy, and courage."

" England has no such names to show; not that she
wanted men of sincere piety, of deep learning, of steady
and adventurous courage. But these were thrown into
the background. Elsewhere men of this character were
the principals. Here they acted a secondary part. Else-
where worldliness was the tool of zeal. Here zeal was
the tool of worldliness. A king, whose character may be
best described by saying that he was despotism personified,
unprincipled ministers, a rapacious aristocracy, a servile
Parliament, such were the instruments by which England
was delivered from the yoke of Rome. . . . Sprung
from brutal passion, nurtured by selfish policy, the
Reformation in England displayed little of what had, in
other countries, distinguished it, unflinching and un-
sparing devotion, boldness of speech, and singleness of
eye."

In all this there is much exaggeration and
much prejudice, but through the caricature it is
possible to recognize an important truth. The
inversion of the normal order, by which the eccle-
siastical system grows out of the religious revolu-

26 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM i

tion, is the key to Anglican history, explaining
both the isolation and the incoherence of the
English Church, but explaining also its unique
independence of the distinctive limitations of the
sixteenth century, and its special competence to
unite varying types of Christian faith in a single
fellowship. Lutherans and Calvinists followed
the great spiritual champions whose names they
were proud to bear, and whose characteristic
ideas found expression, more or less complete,
in the confessions and polities of the Protestant
and Reformed Churches. No individual Re-
former holds in the view of the English Church-
man any such position of authority as that which
is held by Luther, or Calvin, or Zuinglius, or even
John Knox in the view of Presbyterians, on the
Continent and in Scotland. The great Anglicans
are concerned with explaining and defending an
established system, and that system in its eccle-
siastical arrangements was substantially medieval,
and in its theology represented a compromise.
Under Henry VIII., if any foreign divine can be
said to have influenced his ecclesiastical policy,
it was Erasmus rather than Luther. Cranmer,
indeed, was early drawn to Lutheranism, and
had a close personal link with the Lutherans,
but, so long as Henry reigned, the relations of
England with the Lutheran states of Germany
were rather diplomatic than religious. The

I HISTORIC CONDITIONS 27

coldest and briefest of the King's marriages, that
with Anne of Cleves, was dictated by political
considerations, and did not survive them. Eras-
mus, the supreme embodiment of the " new
learning," had regarded with approval the
earlier stages of the Reformation, but, as its
anarchical potencies developed, he drew away,
and reconciled himself to the Papacy. In Eng-
land, Henry VIII., the best-educated monarch
who has ever reigned in England, prided himself
on his patronage of learning. Mr. Leach, the
historian of English schools, gives a glowing
description of the zeal for education which marked
the destroyer of the monasteries :

" No king ever showed more desire to promote learning
and learned men, and none was more impressed and
desirous of impressing on others the advantages, or did
more for the advancement, of education. Whether in
the statutes of the realm or in the ordinances and statutes
of the many foundations of his time, he was never tired of
expatiating on the necessity of education and the benefit
that educated men were to church and commonwealth."*

In the conflict between the " old learning "
and the " new," Henry ranged himself with
the latter, and this circumstance was certainly
not without influence on the course of ecclesi-
astical affairs. Religiously he was, as we have said,
orthodox up to the end, but he surrounded him-

* Vide The Schools of Medieval England^ p. 277.

28 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM i

self with men of more liberal spirit than his own,
and when he placed Thomas Cranmer in the chair
of S. Augustine, he ensured the dominance of
" sound learning " in the process of religious
change. The liturgical and theological recon-
struction which was carried through amid the
distractions of the next reign would be conceived
in that eclectic spirit which was distinctive of
the new learning at its best. If Henry VIII. may
justly be described as the author of the national
establishment of the English Church, Cranmer
may not less justly be described as the author
of the distinctive religious system which the
national establishment has expressed. In both
cases the value and the permanence of the achieve-
ment arose from its correspondence with the
history and temperament of the English people.
The masterful Tudor did but sum up and formu-
late the tendency to complete national autonomy
which had been gathering strength for many
generations. The mild and learned Archbishop
handled the medieval system of faith and worship
in that cautious spirit, at once conservative and
comprehensive, which, however repugnant to
the ardour of fanaticism and inconsistent with
the demands of religious theory, is the true temper
of a genuinely national Church. The character
of the first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury
has been variously estimated as his critics approve

I HISTORIC CONDITIONS 29

or condemn his work. Apart from the inevitable
provocation which he gave to those who resisted
all religious change or disliked the changes which
he effected, there was much in his troubled career
which no just man could condone. His reputa-
tion suffered from his involuntary connection with
the tyranny of Henry VI 1 1., the misgovernment
of Edward VI, , and the squalid treason of
Northumberland. The Catholic, the Puritan,
the High Churchman, and the democrat have
their several and sufficient reasons for reviling the
memory of the man who promoted the breach
with Rome, composed the Prayer- Book, gave a
Protestant character to the Thirty- nine Articles,
and acquiesced in the worst excesses of Tudor
despotism. The brutal scorn of the Whig
historian commanded the eager applause of the
Tractarian leaders, and, perhaps, there is no
section of the National Church which holds the
name of Cranmer in such honour as the other
martyred Bishops, Ridley and Latimer, command
among modern Protestants, or as More and
Fisher command among modern Catholics. Even
the noble fortitude with which he met his death
hardly succeeds in undoing the effect of the
successive recantations which went before. Yet
of all the Churchmen of his time it may fairly
be questioned whether any was so well entitled to
gratitude as a Reformer or to respect as a Christian.

30 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM i

Cranmer's mind was receptive rather than
constructive : he could organize, but he could not
originate. All through his life he was eager to
learn, ready to receive, willing — perhaps too
willing — to revise his beliefs. " The sons of
Zeruiah " were too strong for him at all times,
and forced him into approving or acquiescing
in procedures which were alien to his disposition
and contrary to his judgment. Consistency, the
paramount virtue of small minds, had no special
attraction for him, for he loved truth and pursued
it. He was not only a very learned man, but he
had the mind of a genuine student, and much of
the genuine student's unworldliness. Through-
out his arduous career he held fast to the student's
laborious habit. More than any English eccle-
siastic of his time he possessed the European
mind. His knowledge of the Continent was
acquired not only in the courts where he was
received as a diplomatist, but in the universities
where he came as a scholar, and in the circles of
the theologians who welcomed him as a divine.
His temper was rather that of the Renaissance
than that of the Reformation. In an evil and
evil- speaking generation his private life was with-
out reproach. Never was Archbishop less of a
prelate and more of a sincere and humble Chris-
tian. There was no trace of rancour in Cranmer :
his friends spoke of his " incredible sweetness of
manners," his enemies commended his courtesy,

I HISTORIC CONDITIONS 31

and his forgiving disposition became a proverb.
" Do my lord of Canterbury a shrewd [i.e.^ an
evil] turn," writes Shakespeare, " and he is your
friend for ever."'* The humility of S. Anselm
and the learning of S. Edmund were united
in him with the amiability of Juxon, the
tolerance of Tillotson, and the harsh fortunes
of Laud. His faults were those of his age: his
failures those of his temperament. If just allow-
ance be made for his times and his difficulties,
and a just estimate be formed of the magnitude
and permanence of his work, Cranmer must be
reckoned one of the greatest Englishmen of his-
tory. In an epoch of critical importance he has his
place with the decisive figures, with Henry VIII.,
his terrible master and friend, with the founders
of the Protestant Churches, and with the leaders
of the counter- reformation which sent him to
the stake. Of the Reformers he most resembled
the gentle and scholarly Melancl>thon, and had
least in common with the inexorable Calvin.
Luther's fervour of conviction was alien to him,
but he shared the humanism of Erasmus and the
civic consciousness of Zuinglius. The true suc-
cessors of Cranmer were the Elizabethan Church-
men who under Queen Elizabeth took up his
work, completed, and defended it — Matthew
Parker, Jewel, and Richard Hooker. His spirit
survived less in the hierarchy as a whole than in
* Vide Pollard, Thomas Cranmer, pp. 315, 316.

32 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM i

the Oxford scholars who gathered round Lord
Falkland in the time of Charles I., and in the
Cambridge Platonists who taught a spiritual
Christianity under Charles 11. But, indeed, so
long as the Prayer- Book remains in use, Cranmer
will continue to influence and direct the Church
of England. The Prayer- Book is his supreme
and peerless achievement, and it will always
be his sufficient title to the homage and gratitude
of religious Englishmen.

Thus that dependence on the Monarchy which
gave distinctive character to the English Church
was stamped on it by the very circumstances of
its reconstitution. The sixteenth century was
the " golden age " of monarchy, when its theory
was not only at the highest point but stood in
closest connection with the thought and interest
of the peoples. The general causes which through-
out Europe were strengthening the national
monarchies at the expense of class privilege and
popular liberty were all operative in England.
Henry VIII. conceived of his position as fully
imperial, and followed the example of the Em-
perors during the long conflict with the Popes
in the fourteenth century in using the Roman
law as -a textbook of monarchy. The Wars of
the Roses had predisposed the nation to welcome
a strong government, and the middle classes,
which already had acquired in England a con-

I HISTORIC CONDITIONS 33

siderable importance and were entering eagerly
into the new commercial opportunities opened
hy the inventions and discoveries of the age, were
generally favourable to the new religious teaching
and inclined to support a reforming Sovereign.
Henry VIII. not only shared with other monarchs
the increase of power which accrued from the col-
lapse of the international authorities of medieval
Christendom, but acquired besides a vast and
undefined authority over the National Church.
The reforming divines were led by their depen-
dence on the Bible to give religious sanction to
the absolutism which the lawyers drew from the
legislation of Justinian. The late Professor Mait-
land has well indicated the influence of the civil
law on the Royal Supremacy :

" What an emperor did, a king who had ' the dignity
and royal estate of an imperial crown ' could undo. The
theory of church and state which the civilian found in
his books was the imperial papalism, the C^saro-Papis-
mus, of Byzantium, and now what has been the one
known antidote to this theory was to be placed out of
reach: the schools of canon law were closed. If Henry
was minded to be ' the pope, the whole pope, and some-
thing more than pope,' he might trust the civilians to
place the triple and every other crown upon his head.
In the eyes of 'the common lawyers,' whose traditions
were medieval, the church might still have appeared as
a power co-ordinate with the state, a power with which
the state could treat, co-operate, quarrel; but the civi-

3

34 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM i

lian, whose sacred texts were shaking off the dust of the
middle ages, would, if he were true to his Code and
Novels, find his ideal realized when, and only when, the
church had become a department of the state. The most
superbly Erastian of all Henry's grandiose preambles (we
might call it the Unam sanctam of the royal supremacy)
introduces a statute that benefits the doctors of the civil
law. They would not be ungrateful."*

Dependence on the Monarchy preserved the
English Church from the violent breach with the
past which marked the Reformation on the Con-
tinent and in Scotland, but it carried the seed of
great calamity in the future, when, in the middle
of the seventeenth century, the Monarchy came
into open conflict with the nation. Under the
influence of the Stuart dynasty the luckless
doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings became the
distinctive belief of the Church of England. It
was expressed in extravagant terms, and associated
with political action highly repugnant to the
rising temper of English liberty. Accordingly,
the Church fought and fell with the Monarchy.
Laud, who had held towards Charles I. a position
of intimate co-operation which was not unlike that
which Cranmer in the preceding century had held
towards Henry VIII., followed his royal master
to the block. Neither the Monarchy nor the
Church was restored to the old position, though
in the vehement tide of reaction which followed
the Restoration the history of the critical years
* Vide Canon Law in England^ p. 94.

I HISTORIC CONDITIONS 35

of the Interregnum seemed to have been blotted
out. Charles and Sheldon appeared to revive
the old intimacy of Church and Monarchy, but
the position had been changed beyond recovery.
When the Monarchy became constitutional, the
Church could not remain an enclave of personal
government within the State. Nevertheless its
system remained unaltered, and it entered on
the modern epoch with the practical embarrass-
ment of an obsolete organization. With every
fresh step in the development of democracy,
the ecclesiastical establishment has become more
unintelligible and inconvenient, so that the move-
ment for severing Church and State has been
able to commend itself to many Englishmen who,
without any sympathy with what are called
" voluntaryist " or " denominational " theories
of Christianity, are impatient of anomalies and
abuses which hinder efficiency. Tied fast to the
Monarchy, the Church became national in a very
definite sense. It was identified with the nation
in the same way as the Monarchy, and with the
same measure of justification. The Tudors did
succeed in a very remarkable degree in making
their own interest coincide with the interest
of the English nation. So long as the coincidence
was actual and apparent, the Church of England
could be bound fast to the Monarchy without
compromising its national character, but when
the Stuarts pursued a policy^ which was distasteful

36 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM i

to the nation as a whole, their failure involved
also the failure of the Church. The Reformation
of the English Church was effected in the national
interest and by the national authority. The
ecclesiastical factor was subordinate and, so to
say, optional. Convocation might, or might
not, be consulted. If it were recalcitrant, it
was coerced or ignored. Cut oif from the main
stem, unsupported by the central authority of
the medieval system, the English hierarchy was
too feeble to stand against the imperious will of
the Sovereign or the general sentiment of the
people. The Reformation in England was the
work of the laity, and implied the competence
of the laity to handle spiritual affairs. Con-
vocation had no share in the salient acts of the
Elizabethan settlement — the Acts of Supremacy
and Uniformity. Only when the hierarchy had
been purged and tamed could Convocation be
permitted to resume its constitutional activity.
The national character of the Reformed Church,
thus determined by its dependence on the
Monarchy, was justified by the precedents of the
Jewish Monarchy and the early Christian Empire
— the one implied the appeal to the Scriptures,
the other implied the appeal to antiquity. This
twofold appeal was the method of Anglican
apologetic, on the one hand against the Papacy,
on the other hand against the Puritans.

LECTURE II

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

If the Establishment of the Church of England
could be referred to a particular event in the
history of the National Church, that event would
beyond all question be the passing of the Act of
Uniformity in the year 1662. The full title of
this crucial statute runs as follows : "An Act for
the Uniformity of Public Prayers^ and Administra-
tion of Sacraments^ and other Rites and Ceremonies.
And for establishing the Form of makings ordain-
ing^ and consecrating Bishops^ Priests^ and Deacons
in the Church of England,^^ This Act placed a
term to the long and changing process of the
English Reformation by stereotyping the triumph
of the more conservative factors of that process.
It bears the marks of the revolutionary crisis
from which the nation had but just emerged,
and its enactments are but too plainly coloured
by the vindictive passions which that crisis had
enkindled. After reciting the circumstances which
had rendered legislation necessary, and the method
by which the Elizabethan Prayer- Book had been
revised, the Act legalizes the revised Book and

37

38 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM ii

enforces its use under severe penalties. It re-
quires from the clergy a declaration of " un-
feigned assent and consent to all and everything
contained and prescribed in and by the Book."
Even private teachers and schoolmasters are
brought v^ithin the range of this legal require-
ment. The ninth clause excludes from office in
the Church of England all existi*ng incumbents
who had not received episcopal ordination, and
the tenth clause makes episcopal ordination indis-
pensable for the future. This drastic legislation
might be justified by the necessity of ensuring
the internal coherence of the National Church.
The extreme measure of domestic confusion which
actually existed at the time might excuse severity,
but beyond all question a formidable departure
from the previous attitude of the Church of
England was made. This departure must not be
exaggerated nor misunderstood. That it was not
designed to alter the relation which the Church
of England had held toward the other Reformed
Churches since the Reformation may fairly be
inferred from the proviso in Clause XL :

" Provided that the Penalties in this Act shall not
extend to the Foreigners or Aliens of the Foreign Re-
formed Churches allowed or to be allowed by the King's
Majesty^ His Heirs and Successors in England."

This clause has been differently understood.
Some have held with the late Dr. Sprott that it

II THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 39

" left the door open for the admission to bene-
fices without reordination of foreign Reformed
ministers." Another interpretation, however,
can claim the authority of a contemporanea
expositio. The clause was designed to guard the
interest of the existing foreign congregations.
One of these, the Walloon congregation, which,
since its formation in Edward VI.'s reign, had met
in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral, had not
escaped the contagion of the prevailing sec-
tarianism under the Commonwealth, and was
distracted by a schism at the Restoration. In a
petition of some members of the congregation
addressed to Charles H. in 1662, reference is
made to the clause in the new Act of Uniformity
as guaranteeing the security of the foreign con-
gregations in England. This may appear, perhaps,
the most probable interpretation. The Deans
and Chapters were required (Clause XXIV.) to
provide sealed and certified copies of the Act
with the Prayer-Book annexed, and these copies
were to be preserved in the cathedrals to serve as
local standards equal in authority to the original
Book which the Convocations had subscribed.
The " Sealed Books " contain the earlier Act of
Uniformity (1559), which thus received, through
the subscription of the two Convocations, a
" spiritual " authority which it had hitherto
lacked.

40 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM ii

The immediate result of the Act of Uniformity
was the disruption of the Church. For in the
troubled interval of twenty years which preceded
the Restoration episcopal ordination had not been
within the reach of those who desired to enter
the ministry of the National Church. These
men, Puritan in belief and mostly Presbyterian
in orders, included a large proportion of the more
devout and energetic ministers. The Act con-
fronted them with an intolerable demand. Only
by repudiating as wholly wrong and destitute
of binding force that " Solemn League and Cove-
nant " which had expressed the hopes and con-
victions of Presbyterian Puritanism, and by
accepting reordination at the hands of the Bishops,
could they be suffered to continue in their
parishes. Between i,8oo and 2,000 ministers
retired from the Church to become the founders
of a new nonconformity more respectable than
that of the sects.

The retirement of these Puritan ministers^
struck a heavy blow at the spiritual prestige of
the Established Church. The quality, moral
and pastoral, of the new clergy who replaced the
ejected Nonconformists was conspicuously inferior
to that of their predecessors, and the circumstances
in which they entered the ministry were not
favourable to spiritual efficiency. National re-
ligion suffered deeply from the religious policy

II THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 41

of the restored Monarchy, but there was at least
the compensating advantage that the Church
of England became far more homogeneous. Its
frontiers were narrowed, but its internal disci-
pline was improved. The Act of Uniformity
still binds the Church of England. The Tolera-
tion Act (1689) and the later legislation which
secured civil equality to the Nonconformists
mitigated its provisions and restricted its opera-
tion, but did not affect its authority over the
English clergy. Not until 1865, when the Cleri-
cal Subscription Act was passed, was any altera-
tion of the Caroline settlement in their respect
effected. The ecclesiastical system established
by the Act of Uniformity has remained practically
unaltered until the present time.

The Act of Uniformity fixed the form of the
Prayer- Book, and authorized it as the sole instru-
ment of Anglican worship. By exacting from the
clergy a solemn declaration of '' unfeigned assent
and consent to everything contained in and pre-
scribed by " the Prayer- Book the Act seemed to
clothe that Book with the character of a doctrinal
confession, and to assume that the Book was
doctrinally consistent with itself, and with the
Thirty-nine Articles, which were the formal state-
ment of Anglican teaching. Subscription to the
Articles, which the Canons of 1604 required from
every clergyman, were by the Act required from all

42 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM ii

Governors or Heads of Colleges or Halls. These
Articles, drawn up originally in Edward VI. 's
reign, and sanctioned by the Convocation in a
slightly amended form under Elizabeth, were
strongly Protestant in tone, and expressed in their
doctrine a modified Calvinism. They were not
easily harmonized with the tone and teaching
of the Prayer- Book, which reflected the larger
mind and more devotional temper of primitive
Christianity.

An English clergyman, at his ordination and on
being instituted to a benefice, is required to make
the following " Declaration of Assent " :

" I, A. B., do solemnly make the following Declara-
tion: I assent to the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, and
to the Book of Common Prayer, and to the Ordering of
Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. I believe the Doctrine
of the Church of England as therein set forth, to be
agreeable to the Word of God: and in public Prayer and
Administration of the Sacraments I will use the Form in
the said book prescribed, and none other, except so far
as shall be ordered by lawful authority."

This formula was substituted for a more defi-
nite and stringent declaration, and was certainly
designed by the legislature to remove the grievance
which had been long felt, and which in the
middle of the nineteenth century had become
intolerable. The Thirty-nine Articles originally
composed in Edward VI. 's reign, and revised
at the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth, were

II THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 43

imposed on the clergy in 1562, and, in their present
form, imposed again in 15 71. In both years the
action of Parliament went along with that of the
Convocations. In 1604 the Articles were again
imposed, and they have remained ever since the
official statement of Anglican doctrine. In the
year 1607 Thomas Rogers {ob. 161 6), a chaplain
of Archbishop Bancroft, published — or rather
republished, for the substance of his work had
appeared twenty years earlier — an exposition of
the Articles, which had just been officially
reaffirmed. The title of his work is suggestive:

" The Faith, Doctrine and religion, professed and pro-
tected in the Realm of England, and dominions of the
same: Expressed in Thirty-nine Articles concordably
agreed upon by the Reverend Bishops, and Clergy of this
Kingdom, at two several meetings, or Convocations of
theirs, in the years of our Lord, 1562 and 1604: The
said Articles analysed into Propositions, and the Proposi-
tions proved to be agreeable both to the written word of Gody
and to the extant Confessions of all the neighbour Churches ^
Christianly reformed. The Adversaries also of note and
name, which from the Apostles' days, and primitive
Church hitherto, have crossed, or contradicted the said
Articles in general, or any particle, or proposition arising
from any of them in particular, hereby are discovered,
laid open, and so confuted. Perused, and by the lawful
authority of the Church of England, allowed to be public.

" Rom. xvi. 17. I beseech you. Brethren, Mark them
diligently, which cause divisions, and offences, contrary
to the doctrine which ye have received, and avoid them.

44 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM ii

" Printed by John Legatt, Printer to the University
of Cambridge, 1607/'

Rogers was a Puritan, but he undoubtedly
expressed the general estimate of the Thirty-nine
Articles as demonstrating the Protestant ortho-
doxy of the Church of England. They have their
place in the Harmony of Confessions^ published at
Geneva in 15 81, and, in the English version,
in 1586, to which Rogers referred as proving that
" not only in every particular state or kingdom,
but also throughout Christendom where the
Gospel is entertained, the primitive and apostolical
days were again restored." This " Harmony "
acquired considerable authority in England, and
is even quoted in the Thirtieth Canon.

The question of the meaning and authority
of the Thirty- nine Articles was raised in the case
of the eminent Chillingworth (1602-44) whose
great controversial work, The Religion of Protes-
tants a Safe Way of Salvation (1637), is an Angli-
can classic. As a very young man Chillingworth
had fallen under the influence of the Jesuit
missionaries, and had professed himself a Roman
Catholic, but a few months' personal contact
with the Roman system in Douay had sufficed
to open his eyes, and he had returned to the
English Church. His keen intellect and sensitive
conscience, however, were offended by the re-
quirement of subscription, nor could he feel

II THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 45

himself untouched by the Fifth Anglican Canon,
which pronounced excommunicated if so facto
everyone who should affirm '' that any of the
nine-and-thirty Articles . . . are in any part super-
stitious or erroneous, or such as he may not with a
good conscience subscribe unto." To the general
doctrine of the Articles he had no objection, but
there were some points on which he felt very
strongly. In a letter to his friend Dr. Sheldon,
afterwards the Archbishop of Canterbury (Sep-
tember 2 1 St, 1635), he expressed himself with
frankness :

'' I am at length firmly and unmoveably resolved, if I
can have no preferment without Subscription, that 1
neither can nor will have any.

" For this resolution I have but one reason against a
thousand temptations to the contrary, but it is ev fiiya
against which, if all the little reasons in the world were
put in the balance, they would be lighter than vanity.
In brief, this it is: as long as I keep that modest and
humble assurance of God's love and favour which I now
enjoy, and wherein I hope I shall be daily more and more
confirmed ; so long, in despite of all the world, I may, and
shall, and will be happy. But if I once lose this, though
all the world should conspire to make me happy, I shall
and must be extremely miserable. Now this inestimable
jewel, if I subscribe (without such a declaration as will
make the subscription no subscription), I shall willingly
and wittingly throw away. For though I am very well
persuaded of you and my other friends, who do so with
a full persuasion that you may do it lawfully; yet the

46 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM ii

case stands so with me, and I can see no remedy but for
ever it will do so, that if I subscribe, I subscribe my own
damnation. For though I do verily believe the Church
of England a true member of the Church, that she wants
nothing necessary to salvation, and holds nothing
repugnant to it; and had thought that to think so had
sufficiently qualified me for a subscription; yet now I
plainly see, if I will not juggle with my conscience, and
play with God Almighty, I must forbear.

" For, to say nothing of other things, which I have so
well considered as not to be in state to sign them, and yet
not so well as to declare myself against them; two points
there are wherein I am fully resolved, and therefore care
not who knows my mind. One is, that to say the Fourth
Commandment is a law of God appertaining to Christians,
is false and unlawful: the other that the damning sen-
tences in St. Athanasius's Creed (as we are made to
subscribe it) are most false, and also in a high degree
presumptuous and schismatical. And therefore I can
neither subscribe that these things are agreeable to the
Word of God, seeing that I believe they are certainly
repugnant to it: nor that the whole Common Prayer
is lawful to he used, seeing I believe these parts of it
certainly unlawful : nor promise that / myself will use it,
seeing I never intend either to read these things which
I have now excepted against, or to say Amen to them."*

Some correspondence passed between Sheldon
and Chillingv^orth, and in the end Chillingworth
accepted Sheldon's view as to the lawfulness of
subscription in foro conscientiae. His position,

* Vide TuUoch, Rational Theology in England, vol. i.,
p. 284 note.

II THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 47

which was certainly allowed by Archbishop Laud,
is thus stated in the preface to his book :

" For the Church of England I am persuaded, that the
constant doctrine of it is so pure and orthodox, that who-
soever beUeves it, and lives according to it, undoubtedly
he shall be saved; and that there is no error in it, which
may necessitate or warrant any man to disturb the peace,
or renounce the communion of it. This in my opinion
is all intended by Subscription: and thus much, if you
conceive me not ready to subscribe, your Charity, I
assure you, is much mistakenJ^

In 1638 Chillingworth's eminent service as a
controversialist was rewarded by preferment, and
he subscribed the Articles. " Beyond doubt,"
says Principal TuUoch, " he came to see that
subscription cannot mean to any rational and
fully intelligent mind direct personal assent to all
the particulars of a creed. This is really a higher
and more thoughtful, if less enthusiastic, attitude
than that expressed in his letter."

Laud's own opinion had been set forth in 1624,
when his account of his famous conference with
the Jesuit Fisher was published. There he had
distinguished between the subscription required
by the Church of England, and the doctrinal
demands of the Church of Rome. His opponent
had quoted the Fifth Canon as an evidence of
Anglican intolerance, but Laud insisted that he
had quoted it wrongly :

48 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM ii

" For it is one thing for a man to hold an opinion
privately within himself; and another thing boldly and
publicly to affirm it. And again, it is one thing to hold
contrary to some part of an article, which perhaps may
be in the manner of expression; and another thing posi-
tively to affirm, that the articles in any part of them are
superstitious and erroneous . . . the Church of England •
never declared, that every one of her articles are funda-
mental in the faith. For it is one thing to say, No one
of them is superstitious or erroneous; and quite another
to say. Every one of them is fundamental, and that in
every part of it, to all men's belief. Besides, the Church
of England prescribes only to her own children, and by
those articles provides but for her own peaceable consent
in those doctrines of truth. But the Church of Rome
severely imposes her doctrine upon the whole world,
under pain of damnation."*

Laud was temperamentally unable to appre-
ciate the strength of the feeling which rendered
the Puritans discontented with the Articles,
though he could sympathize with the scruples
of Chillingworth. The great controversy of the
time was that which Calvin's distinctive teaching
had provoked, and the Seventeenth Article seemed
dubious and even misleading to rigid Calvinists.
This feeling had found expression in the Hampton
Court Conference (1604) when Dr. Reynolds
had urged that " the nine assertions orthodoxal
concluded upon at Lambeth (1595) should be

* Vide Works, vol. ii., p. 60, "Library of Anglo-
Catholic Theology."

II THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 49

inserted into the Book of Articles." His pro-
posal was happily rejected, and the Articles con-
tinued to be regarded with some dislike by the
disciples of Calvin. Laud, who " looked with
the contempt of a practical man upon endless
discussions about problems which it was impossible
for the human intellect to solve," attempted to
silence the whole controversy by a stroke of the
royal authority. On June 14th, 1626, Charles L
had issued a proclamation prohibiting any public
disputations which placed any controversial sense
on the Articles. Laud thought this document
might be given a permanent character. Heylyn
thus describes his design :

" Having obtained this height of Power [sc, as the
King's chief adviser after the Duke of Buckingham's
death] he casts his eye back on his Majesty's Proclamation
of the 14th of June, Anno 1626. Of which, though he
had made good use in suppressing some of those books
which seemed to foment the present controversies, yet
he soon found, as well by his own observation, as by
intelligence from others, that no such general notice had
been taken of it as was first expected; for being only
published in Market Towns (and perhaps very few of
them) the Puritan ministers in the country did not
conceive themselves obliged to take notice of it. And
much less could it come to the ears of students in univer-
sities, for whose restraint from meddling, either by
preaching or writing, in the points prohibited, it might
seem most necessary. He knew that by the laws of the
land all ministers were to read the Book of Articles

4

50 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM ii

audibly and distinctly in the hearing of their parishioners
when they first entered on their cures, and that by the
canons of the church all that took orders or degrees were
publickly to subscribe unto them. A Declaration to the
same effect before those Articles must needs give such
a general signification of his Majesty's pleasure that
nobody could from thenceforth pretend ignorance of it,
which must needs render his transgression the more
inexcusable. Upon which prudent considerations he
moved his Majesty that the Book of Articles might be
reprinted, and such a Declaration placed before them as
might preserve them from such misconstruction as had
of late been put upon them, and keep them to their native
literal and grammatical sense. His Majesty approved
the counsel as both pious and profitable, and presently
gave order that all things should be done according as he
had advised."*

The King's Declaration has retained its place
as the Preface to the Thirty-nine Articles, and
as such it is included in the Prayer- Book. It is an
illuminating and authoritative exposition of the
Laudian theory of the National Church. That
theory was hard to reconcile w^ith the actual
course of the English Reformation, and it v^as
patently inconsistent with the theory of the
English Constitution which was quickly estab-
lishing itself in the public mind of England.
Accordingly it was hotly resented by the Parlia-
ment then entering on the conflict with the
Crown, which would plunge the nation into civil

* Vide Heylyn's Life of Laud, pp. 177, 178.

n THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 51

war, bring to the block both the King and the
Archbishop, and overthrow the existing system
in Church and State. For its immediate purpose,
as a method for silencing controversy, the pro-
clamation was a total failure, for the controversy
it aspired to settle was too closely associated in
men's minds with political differences which were
irreconcilable. By its insistence on the gram-
matical sense of the Articles the Proclamation
opened the door to the casuistry by which a Roman
Catholic in the seventeenth century, and an
Anglican in the nineteenth, sought to demonstrate
the possibility of reconciling the letter of the
Articles with the formal doctrine of Trent. Only
by isolating the Thirty- nine Articles from the
historical situation in which they were framed,
and from the documents with which they were
historically associated, and by disallowing the
contemforanea expositio of their language, could
so gross a paradox have been seriously maintained
even by the polemical ardour of ecclesiastical
partisanship.

In 1699 Gilbert Burnet, the famous Bishop of
Salisbury, published his great Exposition of the
Thirty- nine Articles^ which remains still, after
the lapse of more than two centuries, the most
learned and satisfying summary of Anglican
doctrine. The work had been finished five years
before, and was now issued from the Press in
order to meet the situation created by the Peace

52 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM ii

of Ryswick (1695), which had opened England to
the invasion of " a great swarm of priests, not only
those whom the Revolution had frighted away,
but many more new men, who appeared in many
places with great insolence." In his interesting
preface he reviews the course of events in England
since the Reformation, and explains the purpose,
method, and range of his work. He claims to have
made a very complete survey of the controversial
literature of the period, and describes himself
as " to the greatest part rather an historian and
a collector of what others have writ than an
author himself." In the burning and protracted
dispute about predestination he laboured to set
forth the opposed views with scrupulous impar-
tiality, but " owned that he followed the doctrine
of the Greek Church from which S. Austin de-
parted and formed a new system." He held the
Church of England to be fortunate in containing
and tolerating a large variety of opinion :

" We of this church are very happy in this respect; we
have all along been much divided, and once almost
broken to pieces, while we disputed concerning these
matters: but now we are much happier; for though we
know one another's opinions, we live not only united in
the same worship, but in great friendship and love with
those of other persuasions."

Burnet had many faults, which his numerous
critics did not allow him to forget, but he could
beyond his contemporaries emancipate himself

II THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 53

from the self-centred insularity which was, and
is, the besetting sin of English Churchmen. He
saw the religious situation in its European con-
nections, and refused to separate the fortunes
of the Reformation in England from its fortunes
on the Continent. He recognized, as Sir Edwyn
Sandys had recognized a century before, the
disastrous political influence of the breach be-
tween the Lutherans and the Calvinists, which
not merely lowered the spiritual quality of the
contending Churches, but threatened the total
ruin of their common interest. Yet even when
denouncing this fatal discord, he felt that the
combatants could plead that they were at strife
over no petty issue. Far otherwise was it with
the ecclesiastical conflicts within England, which,
though they exposed the common religion to
the utmost peril, were concerned with points of
confessedly minor importance :

" I shall conclude this Preface with a reply, that a
very eminent divine among the Lutherans in Germany
made to me, when I was pressing this matter of union
with the Calvinists upon him, with all the topics with
which I could urge it, as necessary upon many accounts,
and more particularly with relation to the present state
of affairs. He said, he wondered much to see a divine of
the Church of England press that so much on him, when
we, notwithstanding the danger we were then in (it was
in the year 1686), could not agree our differences. They
differed about important matters concerning the attri-
butes of God, and His providence concerning the guilt

54 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM n

of sin, whether it was to be charged on God, or on the
sinner ; and whether men ought to make good use of their
faculties, or if they ought to trust entirely to an irre-
sistible grace? These were matters of great moment:
but, he said, we in England differed only about forms of
government and worship, and about things that were of
their own nature indifferent; and yet we had been
quarrelling about these for about an hundred years ; and
we were not yet grown wiser by all the mischief that this
had done us, and by the imminent danger we were then
in. He concluded. Let the Church of England heal her
own breaches, and then all the rest of the reformed
churches will with great respect admit of her mediation
to heal theirs. I will not presume to tell how I answered
this; but I pray God to enlighten and direct all men,
that they may consider well how it ought to be
answered."

Burnet discusses in his Introduction the pre-
cise significance of the subscription to which the
clergy were obliged, and he disallows the liberal
theory of Chillingworth, which to his view is true
only in the case of the laity. For them these
are only the Articles of Church Communion, and
it suffices that they should think none of them so
gravely false as to make Communion impossible.
But the subscription of the clergy must mean more
than this. He appeals to the title of the Articles,
which states that they were compiled " for the
avoiding of diversities of opinions, and for the
establishing of consent touching true Religion."
The language of the Fifth Canon and that of the

II THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 55

Statute of Elizabeth points in the same direction.
" These things make it appear very plain, that the
subscriptions of the clergy must be considered as
a declaration of their own opinion, and not as a
bare obligation to silence." But as mitigating
the severity of this view he quotes Charles I.'s
Preface, and argues that in requiring assent to
the '' literal and grammatical sense " of the
Articles it permits a large liberty. As an illus-
tration he names the Third Article, " Of the
going down of Christ into Hell," which was
literally capable of at least three senses, all of
which were therefore permissible.

" If men would therefore understand all the other
Articles in the same largeness, and with the same equity,
there would not be that occasion given for unjust censure
that there has been. Where, then, the Articles are con-
ceived in large and general words, and have not more
special and restrained terms in them, we ought to take
that for a sure indication, that the church does not intend
to tie men up too severely to particular opinions, but that
she leaves all to such a liberty as is agreeable with the
purity of the faith."

It would certainly never have occurred to
Burnet that under this principle of interpreta-
tion a sense could be imposed on the Thirty-
nine Articles which would transform them so
effectually as wholly to destroy their value as an
instrument for securing the National Church
against those who repudiated the principles of

56 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM ii

its Reformation. The bold essay of Franciscus
de Sancta Clara to harmonize the Anglican for-
mulary with the doctrine of Trent would have
appeared to him, as to every other Anglican
Churchman of his time, as an example of impudent
sophistry in the interest of the Roman aggression.
However liberally the general sense of an am-
biguous Article might be understood when the
" literal and grammatical " meaning of its lan-
guage was alone insisted upon, yet the general
sense itself was never in doubt. Burnet was an
historian as well as a divine, and he held, as every
historian must always hold, that the Thirty-
nine Articles could not be interpreted apart from
the known beliefs and intentions of their authors,
from the evident purpose which they were de-
signed to serve, and from their plain drift and
natural impression.

" I considered that as I was to explain the Articles of
this church, so I ought to examine the writings of the
chief divines that lived either at the time in which they
were prepared, or soon after it. . . .

" The first, and indeed the most best writer of Queen
Elizabeth's time, was Bishop Jewel; the lasting honour
of the see in which the providence of God has put me,
as well as of the age in which he lived ; who had so great
share in all that was done then, particularly in compiling
the second book of Homilies, that I had great reason to
look on his works as a very sure commentary on our
Articles, as far as they led me."

11 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 57

Burnet was at great pains to make sure that his
treatment of the Articles was approved by the
leaders of the Church. He undertook the work
at the instance of the Queen and the Primate;
the work itself was carefully revised by Tillotson
and Stillingfleet, and read before publication by
" several of the Bishops and a great many learned
divines." It appeared with a dedication to
William HI. Nothing in fact was left undone
to give the Exposition as representative a
character as possible. The book, however, found
no favour in the Lower House of the Convocation
of Canterbury. The clergy were greatly exas-
perated against the Bishops on political grounds,
and of all the Bishops Burnet was the most
politically odious. Accordingly in 1701 they
seized the opportunity of giving expression to
their resentment by attacking the Bishop's
book. Burnet gives the following account of the
incident :

" Hereupon they \i,e., the clergy] being highly incensed
against me, censured my Exposition of the Articles^ which,
in imitation of the general impeachments by the House of
Commons, they put in three general propositions : First,
that it allowed a diversity of opinions, which the Articles
were framed to avoid. Secondly, that it contained many
passages contrary to the true meaning of the Articles, and
to the other received doctrines of our church. Thirdly,
that some things in it were of dangerous consequence to
the church, and derogated from the honour of the refor-

58 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM ii

mation. What the particulars, to which these general
heads referred were, could never be learned: this was a
secret lodged in confiding hands. I begged that the
archbishop would dispense with the order made against
further communications with the lower house as to this
matter; but they would enter into no particulars unless
they might at the same time offer some other matters
which the bishops would not admit of."*

The churlish action of the Lower House could
not obscure the merits of the Exposition which
was confessed significantly by the absence of any
effective criticism. Abroad it was received with
enthusiasm by the great Leibnitz, with whom
Burnet had been in correspondence, and whose
irenical projects he approved. The Treaty of
Ryswick had disclosed to both men the danger to
which the Protestant cause was exposed, and both
judged the union of the Protestant Churches,
Lutheran and Calvinist, to be urgently required
in the common interest. Leibnitz studied with
special care what Burnet had written on the
Articles which dealt with predestination and the
Eucharist, because they were the main points
of division between Continental Protestants. A
Latin rendering of the exposition of the Seven-
teenth Article was published at Berlin in the
interest of peace.f

* Vide History of His own Time^ vol. iv., p. 526
(Oxford, 1833).

t Vide A Life of Bishop Burnet^ by Clarke and Fox-
croft, p. 367.

11 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 59

Burnet's Exposition held the field without a
rival for nearly 150 years, for Bishop Beveridge's
Discourse upon the Thirty-nine Articles^ published
posthumously in 171 6, was too inferior in sub-
stance and literary workmanship to contest its
position. The Oxford Movement, which in so
many respects revived the interests and rekindled
the controversies of the Laudian age, caused also
the character and authority of the Articles to
come again into question. For it was felt that
the doctrine of the Tracts could with difficulty
be harmonized with that of the official confession
of the English Church. " The use and wont of
the Church of England, as the Churchmen of
the day and their fathers and grandfathers had
known it, was condemned in every particular
by the Tracts; and a window seemed at the same
time to be opened in the direction of Rome."
Newman was not unconscious of the apparent
necessity of justifying his method. He stated his
object in writing Tract XC. to be " merely to
show that, while our Prayer- Book is acknowledged
on all hands to be of Catholic origin, our Articles
also, the offspring of an uncatholic age, are,
through God's good providence, to say the least,
not uncatholic, and may be subscribed by those
who aim at being Catholic in heart and doctrine."
The Tract ends with an apology for its method,
written with the apparent candour and elusive
subtlety which marks all its illustrious author's

6o LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM ii

work. He states the case against himself fairly
enough :

" It may be objected that the tenor of the above
explanations [sc, those of the Tract] is anti-Protestant,
whereas it is notorious that the Articles were drawn up
by Protestants, and intended for the establishment of
Protestantism; accordingly that it is an evasion of their
meaning to give them any other than a Protestant drift,
possible as it may be to do so grammatically, or in each
separate part."

On the natural assumption that the Articles
were designed to serve their professed object
of '^ the establishing of Consent touching true
Religion " this objection might well seem fatal,
but Newman returns an answer which he calls
" simple." Its gist is contained in the final
sentences, which have a cynical and almost
minatory ring:

"The Protestant Confession was drawn up with the
purpose of including CathoUcs; and CathoUcs will not
now be excluded. What was an economy in the Re-
formers is a protection to us. What would have been a
perplexity to us then, is a perplexity to Protestants now.
We could not then have found fault with their words;
they cannot now repudiate our meaning."

Newman postulates " a duty which we owe both
to the Catholic Church and to our own, to take
the reformed confessions in the most Catholic
sense they will admit," and says brusquely that

11 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 6i

" we have no duties towards their framers." In
taking up this position he appears to be immersed
in a twofold fallacy. On the one hand, his dis-
tinction between the Catholic Church and the
Church of England is for an English Church-
man wholly illegitimate and unmeaning, for the
Church of England must needs be for him iden-
tical with the Catholic Church, and its variations
from the general system be such as are implicit
in the fact of its Reformation, and specifically
justified by the principle of national autonomy
in non-essentials on which that Reformation pro-
ceeded. On the other hand, there is no question
of " duties owed towards the framers of the
Articles," but of an honest and reasonable sub-
scription to the Articles themselves, which is the
paramount duty which every subscribing clergy-
man owes to the Church of England when accept-
ing the commission of its ministry. On the prin-
ciples of interpretation advocated in Tract XC. it
is obvious that subscription to the Articles would
be robbed of all precise significance, for " the
Catholic sense " in which they must ex hypothesi
be understood is undefined, and could only mean
whatever the subscribing clergyman chose to
make it mean. Even the " literal and grammatical
sense " required by the Laudian Preface provided
no security against this unmitigated individualism,
since Newman could argue that the Preface

62 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM ii

" was promulgated at a time when the leading
men of our Church were especially noted for those
Catholic views which have been here [sc,^ in
Tract XC] advocated," and that in forbidding
any person to " affix any new sense to any Article "
the Preface must be held to validate the prevailing
sense which was " Catholic." The revolutionary
character of Tract XC. was at once perceived, and
provoked a great storm of protest. Authority,
both academic and episcopal, repudiated such a
handling of the Articles as uncandid, unreasonable,
and unlawful. Newman himself and many of his
disciples acknowledged the weight of this general
condemnation by leaving the Church of England
and joining the Church of Rome; but there were
many of the Tractarians, less logical than Newman
and with less sensitive consciences, who did not
follow him, and they continued to avail them-
selves of the sophistry which he had provided in
order to evacuate their subscription of the Articles
of any meaning. Bishop Forbes put forth in
1867 24n Explanation of the Thirty-nine Articles^
with an Epistle dedicatory to the late Rev, E. B.
Pusey^ which applied Newman's principle of in-
terpretation systematically. He, too, held that
^' the Declaration was the enunciation of the
Catholic sense of the Articles," and added that
" Tract XC. and the Eirenicon are legitimate
outcomes of the King's Declaration." The older

II THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 63

and the sounder view had found expression in
An Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles^ His-
torical and Doctrinal^ published in 1850 by Edward
Harold Browne (1811-91), afterwards Bishop of
Winchester, which replaced Burnet's Exposition
as the authoritative textbook. His principles
of interpretation are thus stated in the Intro-
duction :

" In the interpretation of them (the Articles), our best
guides must be, first their own natural, literal, gram-
matical meaning; next to this, a knowledge of the contro-
versies, which had prevailed in the Church, and made such
Articles necessary; then, the other authorized formularies
of the Church; after them, the writings and known
opinions of such men as Cranmer, Ridley, and Parker,
who drew them up; then the doctrines of the primitive
Church, which they professed to follow; and lastly, the
general sentiments of the distinguished English divines,
who have been content to subscribe the Articles, and
have professed their agreement with them for now
300 years. These are our best guides for their interpre-
tation. Their authority is derivable from Scripture
alone."

With an apparent reference to Tract XC,
he adds :

" On the subject of subscription, very few words may
be sufficient. To sign any document in a non -natural
sense seems neither consistent with Christian integrity
nor with common manliness. But, on the other hand,
a national Church should never be needlessly exclusive.

64 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM ii

It should, we can hardly doubt, be ready to embrace, if
possible, all who truly believe in God, and in Jesus
Christ, whom He hath sent. Accordingly, our own
Church requires of its lay members no confession of their
faith, except that contained in the Apostles' Creed. . . .
If we consider how much variety of sentiment may
prevail amongst persons who are, in the main, sound in
the faith, we can never wish that a national Church,
which ought to have all the marks of catholicity, should
enforce too rigid and uniform an interpretation of its
formularies and terms of union. The Church should be
not only Holy and Apostolic, but as well. One and
Catholic. Unity and universality are scarcely attain-
able, where a greater rigour of subscription is required,
than such as shall ensure an adherence and conformity to
those great catholic truths, which the primitive Christians
lived by, and died for."

The Thirty-nine Articles had always been
disliked by " Anglo-Catholics " as incorrigibly
Protestant in tone, drift, and substance, but they
had been reduced to nullity by the sophistry
of Tract XC. They were objectionable to more
liberal Anglicans as being both excessively dog-
matic and increasingly obsolete. From the time
of Chillingworth until the present age this
objection has been felt, and it has been met,
as we have seen, by minimizing the doctrinal,
and emphasizing the disciplinary, significance
of subscription. The Articles, it has been held,
are Articles of peace, Articles of communion, not,
in the full sense. Articles of belief. This mini-

II THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 65

mizing view, however, has been felt to be always
more politic and charitable than historically sound
or morally satisfactory. The grievance which it
was intended to remove has persisted, and from
time to time found forcible expression. Liberal
discontent with subscription was stimulated by
the rationalizing tendency which swept over
England in the course of the eighteenth century,
and threatened to impose an Arian sense on the
formularies of the Established Church. The
orthodoxy of the Articles was as hotly resented
by Deists and Arians then as their Protestantism
by Tractarians since. It is interesting to observe
that the advocates of the largest liberty of inter-
pretation for the one set of aggrieved Churchmen
have been the least disposed to make any con-
cessions to the other. Waterland (1683-1740), in
The Case of Arian Subscription Considered, urged
roundly that " as the Church requires subscription
to her ozvn interpretation of Scripture, so the
subscriber is bound, in virtue of his subscription
to that, and that only; and if he knowingly sub-
scribes in any sense contrary to, or different from,
the sense of the imposers, he prevaricates, and com-
mits a fraud in so doing." On this view the Trac-
tarians would have found themselves barred from
subscription, but as against unorthodox rivals the
argument served well enough. Newman, even
when putting forward his sophistical theory of

5

66 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM ii

subscription, was careful to make it plain that he
would be no party to any concession to Liberalism :

" If in any quarter it is supposed that persons who
profess to be disciples of the early Church will silently
concur with those of very opposite sentiments in further-
ing a relaxation of subscriptions, which it is imagined
are galling to both parties, though for different reasons,
and that they will do this against the wish of the great
body of the Church, the writer of the following pages
\sc.y Tract XC] would raise one voice, at least, in protest
against any such anticipation."

It was entirely congruous with this attitude
that the Tractarian leaders and the High Church
party were actively opposed to the Clerical Sub-
scription Act (1865), which mitigated the terms
of clerical subscription with the professed object
of relieving the grievance of Liberal Anglicans.

Every English clergyman is pledged to " assent "
to the Book of Common Prayer, and of ordering
of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, to believe the
doctrine therein set forth to be agreeable to the
Word of God, and to use the prescribed forms of
public prayer and administration of the Sacra-
ments. How is this pledge now interpreted by
English Churchmen ? The question must needs
present itself to the least observant visitor's mind,
for the services of the Church of England, which
this pledge was intended to render uniform,
present a bewildering variety. In many parish

II THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 67

churches the appearance of the church, the type
of the service, the dress of the officiating clergy,
the behaviour of the congregations, and the
teaching from the pulpits, are hardly distinguish-
able from those of the Church of Rome. All
the distinctive features of Roman religion are
becoming familiar in the Church of England —
the Mass, the Reserved Sacrament, Incense, the
Confessional, Invocation of Saints, the cult of
the Blessed Virgin Mary, Purgatory. The Thirty-
nine Articles, which have generally been supposed
to prohibit all these, are effectually neutralized
by the " Catholic sense," in which, on the prin-
ciples of Tract XC, they must be understood.
But the Prayer-Book remains, and it consists as
little as the Articles with all these Roman practices
and teachings. How has this difficulty been
surmounted ? The answer can be given in a
phrase — the Ornaments Rubrick. In all the his-
tory of Churches there is hardly to be found a
parallel to the transforming effect of the belated
discovery that the Ornaments Rubrick, rightly
comprehended, restores all that the Book of
Common Prayer, of which it was the modest
appendage, had been carefully designed to dis-
allow.

The Ornaments Rubrick, which has exercised
so potent an influence on the Church of England,
is printed in the Prayer-Book immediately before

68 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM ii

" The Order for Morning Prayer," and runs
thus :

" The Morning and Evening Prayer shall be used in the
accustomed Place of the Church, Chapel, or Chancel:
except it shall be otherwise determined by the Ordinary
of the Place. And the Chancels shall remain as they
have done in times past.

" And here it is to be noted, that such Ornaments of
the Church and of the Ministers thereof, at all Times of
their Ministration, shall be retained, and be in use, as
were in this Church of England, by the Authority of
Parliament, in the Second Year of the Reign of King
Edward the Sixth."

The first paragraph of this rubrick w^as the
occasion of heated controversy in the seventeenth
century; the last has provoked protracted liti-
gation in the nineteenth. A voluminous litera-
ture has been produced, and the Law Reports
contain a long series of judicial verdicts crammed
with antiquarian learning. Almost every point
remains yet in dispute, and probably will so
remain, for the conclusions to which men arrive
are so closely bound up with their religious
predilections that impartial consideration of
evidence is not to be looked for. What is the
character, purpose, and effect of the rubrick ?
Is it to be regarded as itself a legal enactment,
or is it rather no more than a reference to the
provision of the Elizabethan Act of Uniformity

II THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 69

which is printed earlier in the Prayer- Book?
What are the Ornaments referred to ? What
is meant by " retained and be in use " ? by
" authority of Parliament " ? by the " second
year " of Edward VL ? On all these points pro-
longed and indecisive debate has proceeded, and
still proceeds. In 1907 a sub-committee of the
Upper House, consisting of the Bishops of Salis-
bury, Bristol, Exeter, Gloucester, and Ely, pre-
sented a careful and learned Report on " The
Ornaments of the Church and its Ministers."
A very careful enquiry, which seems to have left
no relevant facts out of consideration, led the
Bishops to the surprising conclusion that the
practice of the Church of England for 300 years,
and the decisions of the Courts, were contrary
to the requirements of the Ornaments Ru-
brick, and that the " Mass vestments " had sur-
vived the Mass, and are legally obligatory on
English clergymen. It needs no saying that,
in spite of the personal authority of the five
Bishops, and the elaborate care with which they
considered the subject, this conclusion has failed
to command general acceptance. Quite recently,
Mr. Justice Coleridge has confirmed the inter-
pretation of the five Bishops in giving judgment
in Gore-Booth v. the Bishop of Manchester.
Eucharistic vestments need not imply medieval
doctrine, but their deliberate revival after the

70 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM ii

disuse of centuries could hardly be without
doctrinal significance; and in point of fact the
revived use of the vestments has proceeded
fari passu with a teaching with respect to the
Eucharist which is hard to distinguish from that
which prevailed in the medieval Church. The
development of the Tractarian movement since
the secession of Newman ended the academic
and inaugurated the public phase of its history,
has left the controversy about the Eucharistic
vestments far behind. The principle that every-
thing Anglican must be interpreted in a " Catho-
lic sense " has been found capable of many
applications. In the hands of the " Anglo-
Catholics " the Ornaments Kubrick has been the
magical formula by which the entire system of
medieval religion, long abrogated by the law and
long forgotten in the parishes, might be recovered.
It was contended that every ornament which
existed in the parish churches in the second year
of Edward VI. — ^when practically the unreformed
system still remained — was legalized by the
rubrick, and then, by a still bolder flight of
preposterous logic, that every ceremony for which
the ornament was required, and every practice
and doctrine which it implied, were also legalized.
On these lines the whole process of the Reforma-
tion could be ignored, and the practical system
of the medieval Church could be reinstated

II THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 71

in the parish churches under colour of the
law.

Nor did the process of religious retrogression
stop even there. For the " Catholic sense "
which was to govern the English clergyman's
interpretation of his legal subscriptions was itself
changing. When Newman wrote Tract XC,
the old Anglican appeal to antiquity was still
supposed to be effectual against the claims of the
Papacy and to yield a working theory of Catho-
licism. But the notion of development spoiled
all. The witness of the Fathers was seen to be
more favourable to the Roman type of Christianity
than to the Anglican, and it could not be disputed
that, if the process of development were allowed
to be legitimate, the former rather than the latter
had the stronger case. Accordingly, the latest
phase of the Tractarian movement has been again
Romewards as was the earliest. The Roman
version of Catholic Christianity is being quickly
identified with that " Catholic sense " which
binds the Anglo-Catholic mind. An instructive
illustration of the present tendency is the attempt
to introduce the practice of " Benediction "
into the parish churches. This popular devo-
tional service, of which the distinguishing feature
is a solemn blessing of the congregation with the
Reserved Sacrament, was unknown in the Middle
Ages, and has been introduced into the Roman

72 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM ii

Church since the Reformation. Not even the
Ornaments Rubrick could be seriously thought
to legalize a practice which was unknown at the ;
time it was framed. Only* by identifying the
" Catholic sense " with the Roman could an ]
English clergyman, on Newman's view, hold
himself free to introduce " Benediction." None I
the less this novel service proceeds in several
churches, and will probably succeed quickly in .
establishing its place in the habit of Anglo- '
Catholics. It is not, however, undeserving of
notice that the latest developments of the party
have been viewed with considerable misgiving by i
the older men. The English Church Union has \
been divided on the subject of Benediction, both ;
the late President, Lord Phillimore, and his j
predecessor. Lord Halifax, having declared them- ]
selves strongly opposed to the insubordinate j
action of the clergymen who have introduced the \
Roman service in disobedience to the explicit \
requirements of their diocesans. The future of \
the party probably lies with the younger members, ]
and these are increasingly Roman in spirit and ,;
action. It is not easy to determine how strong ■
a following the Anglo-Catholic view of English
Churchmanship can command. Probably not
more than a third of the clergy are definitely
" High Churchmen," but this minority includes
a disproportionate share of the more important

11 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 73

parish clergymen and most of the Archdeacons,
A majority of the Bishops belongs to the same
description, though none of them could fairly be
reckoned among the supporters of the Romanizing
views fashionable among the inferior clergy.
How far the Romanizing movement has extended
among the laity is not easy to determine. That
the old fanatical " No Popery " sentiment,
which once compelled the cautious regard of
English statesmen, has decayed is as certain as
it is satisfactory. Perhaps its last considerable
outburst was that which carried the abortive
" Ecclesiastical Titles Act " on to the statute-
book, and then ebbed with such rapidity that the
Act was repealed within a few months without
provoking any public resentment. It would,
however, be a bold inference that the profound
suspicion and dislike of sacerdotalism has perished
from the English mind. In view of the apparent
political helplessness of the modern Papacy the
old language of Protestant vigilance and appre-
hension has become rather absurd, and now only
lingers on the lips of the ignorant and fanatical.
Yet the religious consciousness of average English-
men remains intensely Protestant. Any serious
and general attempt to introduce the Confessional
as a normal feature of parochial religion would be
widely and deeply resented. Even in parishes
where the services of the parish church have been

74 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM ii

effectively Romanized there is often a strong
undercurrent of popular repugnance, which some-
times expresses itself in absence from the public
worship and secession to the Nonconformist
chapels. Still it is the case that the efforts of
an earnest and well-organized party during two
generations have not been without result. There
are many congregations, especially in London and
the fashionable watering-places which reflect
London fashions, to which the teaching and
worship of Romanized Anglicanism have become
dear, and which are ready to support their clergy,
both against the verdicts of the law-courts and
the authority of the Bishops. The Romanizing
clergy are in some cases men of popular gifts and
great personal devotion, attracting to themselves
by the best of titles the love and confidence of
their parishioners. Many are ardent Christian
Socialists, and some have adopted the extremer
views of Socialism itself. Indirectly the rapid
rise of the artisans to political power in the wake
of popular education has facilitated the success
of the law-breaking clergy, for it has secured to
them that sympathy with all forms of lawlessness
which is the intelligible but dangerous charac-
teristic of the poorest classes.

LECTURE III

PURITANISM

The Reformation destroyed the unity of English
religious life. For not only was the new doctrine
rejected by a considerable number of Englishmen,
but it was variously understood by those who
accepted it. The Reforming movement every-
where had a Right and a Left, a party of Conser-
vatives who would limit change to what was
absolutely unavoidable, and a party of Radicals
who would push change to its extremest logical
requirement. From the breach with the Papacy
under Henry VIII. to the excommunication of
Elizabeth by Pius V. — that is, from 1533 to 1570 — •
the restoration of the papal authority was not
wholly outside the limit of practical politics.
If Mary had been a less ardent disciple of the
Counter-Reformation, and if her reign had been
as protracted as that of her successor, it is prob-
able that her religious system would have stood,
and only fallen before the definite triumph of
Calvinism at a later period; but her fanaticism
and her death within six years of her accession
to the throne made the victory of the Reforma-

75

^e LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iii

tion a political necessity. Elizabeth, the daughter
of the unfortunate Anne Boleyn, could hardly
recognize the papal authority which branded her
as a bastard. Her title to the throne was the
will of her father, to whose policy she was attached
both by interest and temperament. The extreme
repugnance which the religious persecution and
the apparent subordination of England to Spain
had provoked in the public mind made her acces-
sion generally popular, and secured an interval
during which her government could establish
itself firmly. The intricate play of European
politics co-operated with the situation within
England to conceal, or at least to obscure, the
religious policy to which she was necessarily
committed, and the skilful diplomacy of the Queen
took full advantage of the fact; but the definite
triumph of the Reformation was never really in
doubt, and had soon to be acknowledged both
abroad and at home. Yet the European situation
had an influence on the course of events in Eng-
land. Throughout those first years of perilous
weakness it was important, perhaps even vital,
to avoid coming under the proscription of Pope
and Emperor: and neither Pope nor Emperor
was in a position to precipitate unnecessarily the
total alienation of England. The Peace of
Augsburg (1555) had differentiated Lutheranism
from the extremer types of Reformed Religion,

in PURITANISM 77

and given it a recognized status. So long, there-
fore, as Elizabeth could pass as a Lutheran, or
could give the impression that she shared the
Lutheran dislike of Calvinism, she came within
the sphere of tolerable religion, and was politically
legitimate. It is not extravagant to suppose that
the features of her religious policy — the retention
of episcopacy, the removal of some anti-papal
passages from the Prayer-Book, the suppression
of the Thirty-eighth Article, the Ornaments
Kubrick, the Crucifix in the Royal Chapel — ^which
most offended the thoroughgoing advocates of
Reform in England, and most perplexed the
foreign Reformers, were designed to create an
impression that the Queen was a Lutheran, or
at least that she had Lutheran sympathies. The
appearance was little more than a diplomatic
ruse, for Lutheranism retained slight hold on Eng-
land when Elizabeth ascended the throne. In the
interval since Henry VIII. 's death the English
Reformers had come generally under the influence
of Calvin, and were disposed to look to Geneva
for their models of doctrine and discipline.

The Fathers of the Reformation had had little
knowledge of the magnitude and destiny of the
movement which they had inaugurated; but as
events followed in rapid succession, they found
themselves carried far beyond their original
positions. Their demand for the reform of prac-

78 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iii

tical abuses brought them Into violent conflict
with the vested interests of the medieval hierarchy,
and forced them to raise the whole question of
the authority by which, and the principles on
which, the reformation of the ecclesiastical system
ought to be effected. When the Papacy, itself
the embodiment of the most scandalous abuses,
refused the demand for reform, men turned
inevitably to the State, which was the obvious
alternative. In doing so they were not going
outside medieval precedents. The abortive Con-
ciliar movement of the fifteenth century had
familiarized Christendom with the notion of
ecclesiastical reform initiated and carried through
against the will of the Pope. It had bequeathed
a formidable suggestion to the monarchs of
Europe. But the Council of Constance, which
deposed John XXIII. , had also condemned
John Wy cliff e and burned John Huss. The
monarchs could not be trusted to reform the
Church. The Reformers had perforce moved
beyond the familiar medieval notion of reform,
and were bringing under a relentless criticism the
whole established system of doctrine and dis-
cipline. They were using the new weapon
which the Humanists had supplied, the weapon
of historical criticism, and they were applying
the new standard which the Greek Testament
had suggested. Early in the history of the Re-

Ill PURITANISM 79

formation, the great vernacular versions of the
Scriptures were pubHshed, with the result that
religious controversy ceased to be the monopoly
of the learned, and became the absorbing interest
of the multitude. The consequence was not
wholly good, for if it must be allowed that the
Bible in the hands of the common people made
possible a higher standard of religious intelligence
than had hitherto been general, it must also be
admitted that a door was opened to much heresy
and destructive fanaticism. The rapid multipli-
cation of sects, which weakened and discredited
the Reformation, was the first consequence of
placing the Bible in the hands of the people, and
bidding them draw their own conclusions from
its pages. Individualism, unchecked by know-
ledge and unrestrained by authority, ran riot in
the sphere of Biblical interpretation. Nor could
the effect be limited to religious politics, for social
oppression was as flagrant as ecclesiastical corrup-
tion, and perhaps more generally exasperating.
The teachings of the prophets and apostles seemed
to provide an authoritative condemnation of
the social order under which the peasants were
suffering grievous wrongs. It is not then sur-
prising that the peasants began to apply to the
nobility the principles of judgment which they
had been encouraged to apply to monks and
bishops. The Reformation became associated

8o LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iii

with communism and anarchy, and the Reformers,
to save their credit with their patrons, were
led to the acceptance and defence of social and
political conditions, which could not possibly
be reconciled with the principles of the Gospel.

The general fortune of the Reformation had
its counterpart in England, but there the social
conditions, though hard, were less oppressive, the
religious changes were more moderate and more
gradual — above all, the central government was
far stronger. Accordingly, there is no close Con-
tinental parallel to the religious Dissent which
has played so large a role in the history of England.

Anglicanism can never be intelligible apart
from a knowledge of Nonconformity. It is
difficult, indeed, to say which is the most char-
acteristic product of the English character. If
Anglicanism expresses its balance, love of prece-
dent, and tendency to compromise, Puritanism
as certainly discloses its moral fervour and obsti-
nate individualism. Both have been deeply
affected in form and quality by the course of
national progress. Both have left indelible traces
upon that course; in the interplay of influences
it is hard to say which has been dominant. It
must suffice to insist that neither can be under-
stood in isolation from the national history.

The origins of Nonconformity run back to the
age of Wycliffe^ for it cannot be doubted that the

Ill PURITANISM 8i

movement of religious revolt which he inaugurated
survived as an undercurrent of religious life in the
country until the sixteenth century. Not with-
out justification has Wycliffe been described
as " the morning star of the Reformation." In
the list of errors for which the Lollards were
condemned we find all the characteristic tenets
of the most extreme Reformers. But it was the
Reformation which released into expression
whatever discontent with the ecclesiastical system
was latent in the popular mind. The circum-
stance that in England the Reformation was
carried through by the national authorities, the
King and Parliament, not only secured an avoid-
ance of extreme procedures, but also postponed
the bitter conflicts implicit in the movement.
At the close of Henry VIII.'s reign, however,
there were evident signs that a new spirit had
entered into the process of reformation. With
impartial severity Henry had condemned to death
Papists and sectaries alike, but if his reign had
been prolonged for a few years, the logic of events
would have compelled him, however reluctantly,
to declare himself on one side or the other, and,
in the circumstances, he could hardly have avoided
casting in his lot with the Protestants.

The old King's death opened the floodgates of
innovation. Cranmer's influence and authority
continued to exercise a conciliatory restraint,

6

82 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM in

but he was himself moving towards extremer
views, and if Edward VI. 's reign had continued, or
if Lady Jane Grey had succeeded in establishing
her position, it is certain that the Reformation
in England would have joined the main stream
of the Reformation on the Continent. The
Church of England would have been Calvinist
in creed and Presbyterian in polity. From this
prospect the Church was saved by the interposi-
tion of Mary's brief and unhappy reign, the con-
sequences of which on the subsequent religious
history of England can hardly be overestimated.
On the one hand, the settlement which
Henry VIII. and Cranmer had worked out was
rescued from the discredit into which it had been
plunged by the ill- government of Edward VL,
and was consecrated by the martyrdom of its
principal representatives. Cranmer crowned his
services to the Reformed Church by dying for it.
His martyrdom at the stake purged his vacilla-
tions, and gave stability to his work. On the
other hand, the persecution had intensified and
embittered the controversy; the points at issue
were more fundamental than they had been under
Henry VIII., when the conflict had hardly moved
outside the familiar limits of medieval debate.
The nature, extent, and method of papal authority
had been much discussed in the fifteenth century,
and Christendom was not unfamiliar with conflicts

in PURITANISM 83

between local churches and the Papacy, nor even
with repudiation of papal claims. During the
papal schism the national authorities had been
compelled to decide which of the contending
Pontiffs should be acknowledged as the lawful
Father of Christendom. The crisis of the
Reformation fell upon a discredited Papacy.
Henry VIII. himself was never conscious of going
beyond the limits of medieval orthodoxy, but
on the Continent from the first the Reformation
had had a more fundamental character. It had
challenged the doctrinal tradition of the Church,
and had broken with its characteristic discipline.
The Continental Reformation was increasingly
affecting opinion in England, but as long as the
government of the country was itself committed
to the work of reform, no open breach had been
made between the Protestants and the national
hierarchy. Under Mary, however, the national
hierarchy succeeded to the Papacy as the principal
opponent of the Gospel. Thus anti-episcopal
feeling was created and apparently justified.
The attack was directed rather against the central
doctrines and practices of the medieval Church
than against its constitution and policy; the Mass,
not the Papacy, was regarded as the citadel of
error. The notion of religious dissent from the
State system became familiar and respectable, and
the spiritual authority of the State received a

84 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iii

wound from which it never really recovered.
The breach between the old system and the new
became complete and unbridgeable; there was no
longer, as had been the case under Henry, the
assumption on both sides that a reconciliation
was possible; a conflict of first principles had
disclosed itself, and neither side was prepared to
negotiate. When, therefore, Elizabeth aspired
to pick up the threads of her father's tradition,
and to re-establish the Church on the lines which
he had laid down, the situation was no longer the
same. In the interval between Henry VIII. 's
death and Elizabeth's accession the religious
movement from the Continent had entered Eng-
land, joined hands with the sympathetic elements
within the country, and transformed the doctrine,
discipline, and worship of the Church of England.
Elizabeth could perpetuate the ecclesiastical
polity which her father had devised, but she could
not re-create the intellectual and religious con-
ditions under which he acted. The hierarchy
which she succeeded in perpetuating was depen-
dent on herself in a measure which was never the
case under Henry VIII. When the Marian
Bishops refused to accept the new settlement,
the Queen was compelled to appoint a new hier-
archy drawn from the Protestants, which was,
indeed, sufficiently complaisant, but which carried
little weight with the people. The Elizabethan

Ill PURITANISM 85

Bishops were for the most part themselves un-
sympathetic with the system which they were
called upon to administer. Moreover, in the
early years of Elizabeth's reign the final shape
of the religious settlement was still sufficiently
doubtful to make it difficult for the new Bishops
to command general respect, nor can it be denied
that, with few exceptions, neither their abilities
nor their characters were such as to assist their
official authority. During the Marian persecution
many of them had been among the numerous
English refugees who had found shelter in Ger-
many and Switzerland, and on their return to
England they did not readily break away from
the fellowship which they had enjoyed abroad.
The opponents of the Elizabethan settlement
were, of course, in close alliance with the foreign
Reformers — that is, with the Calvinists, for the
earlier association with the Lutherans had not
only ceased, but had been replaced by sentiments
of active hostility. In the great schism in the
Continental Reformation between the Reformed
or Calvinist and the Lutheran or Evangelical
Churches, which brought calamity upon so great
a part of reformed Christendom, and gave strength
to the Counter-Reformation organized by the
Jesuits, the English Reformers, for the most part,
allied themselves with the followers of Calvin.
When, therefore, the Elizabethan settlement

86 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iii

succeeded in establishing itself, and grew strong
with the strength of the Monarchy, drawing to
itself the patriotic sentiment which the conflict
with Spain stirred and raised to passionate fer-
vour, the disaffected English Protestants, now
coming to be known as Puritans, went into open
opposition, adopted the Presbyterian polity, and
even attempted to organize Presbyterian Churches
within the national establishment. This phase
of Puritanism was finally defeated by Archbishops
Whitgift and Bancroft. It is to be noted that the
Established Church throughout this period was
definitely associated with the national cause.
Patriotic Englishmen thought of the war with
Spain and the Papacy as a Crusade, and pictured
their nation as another " chosen people " ordained
to maintain the Lord's cause against His enemies,
and receiving no less authentications of Divine
approval and providential mission. This attitude
of mind was fostered by the study of the English
Bible, now widely disseminated in the Genevan
version. The Old Testament, perhaps, was
studied rather than the New; the conception of
the English as another Israel grew strong in
English minds. The Puritans were compromised
by their apparent disloyalty to the national system,
on which were plainly visible the evidences of
Divine approval. This phase culminated in the
enthusiasm which was stirred by the great victory

Ill PURITANISM gy

over the Spanish Armada in 1588. The sectaries,
who took up a position of open antagonism to
the whole conception of a national system of
religion were generally odious, and mostly were
driven to take refuge in Holland. There they
developed their systems and discredited them-
selves by their factions.

Another and more important chapter of Puri-
tanism opens with the accession of James I. The
canons of 1604 and their enforcement by Arch-
bishop Bancroft may be said to register the
definite triumph of the Elizabethan settlement
of which Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity pro-
vided the classical exposition. When Bancroft
died in 1610, the Church of England was popular
at home, respected and envied by the Protestants
abroad. It possessed a prestige greater than,
perhaps, it ever enjoyed before or since. In
that year the eminent Huguenot scholar, Isaac
Casaubon, took refuge in England. His coming
was welcomed as evidence of the supreme
position which the Church of England was ad-
mitted to hold among the Reformed Churches.
Puritanism ceased to be associated with projects
of ecclesiastical change and acquired a definitely
moral character. It was concerned with develop-
ing a worthier type of Christian Hfe within the
Church. With the appointment of George
Abbot to the See of Canterbury as Bancroft's

88 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iii

successor, a typical Puritan became head of the
national hierarchy. The Calvinist theology at
that time was carrying all before it. Both James I.
and Archbishop Abbot were strong Calvinists,
and when, in 1618, the King sent English repre-
sentatives to the Synod of Dort, he was taking a
step which commended itself generally to English
Churchmen. James, however, was wholly un-
fitted to be the leader of a moral reformation.
His court was disfigured by notorious scandals,
his own private life was compromised by excess,
extravagance, and dishonourable favouritism, and
he set himself to resist and suppress the Sabba-
tarian movement, which, although irrational in
many of its expressions, commended itself to the
best and most religious members of the Church.
When, moreover, the King developed his Spanish
policy, he put himself in opposition to what the
majority of his subjects justly held to be the evi-
dent interest of the country, both political and
religious. The situation was completely reversed.
Not the Arminian Bishops but the Calvinist
Puritans became the exponents of English patriot-
ism, which was becoming identified with the
cause of liberty at home and the defence of the
Reformation abroad. Calvinism, which was losing
its hold on scholars and thinkers, gained new
prestige as the creed of the Protestant champions*
England could not really be neutral in the Thirty

Ill PURITANISM 89

Years' War (1618-48). Gustavus Adolphus,
the Lion of the North, became the hero of re-
ligious men in England and Scotland, from whence
numerous volunteers flocked to his banner.
The situation, strained under James I., became
rapidly acute under his successor. Charles I.
had been bred in a hatred of Puritanism, and he
was sincerely devoted to the narrow Anglicanism
which was coming into fashion. When Arch-
bishop Abbot died in 1633, his place was filled
by William Laud, Bishop of London, the recog-
nized and uncompromising opponent of the
Puritans. The new Anglicanism was now supreme
on the throne and in the hierarchy. It had
little in common with that of the founders of the
Reformed Churches. It was learned, patristic,
sacramental, sacerdotal. Under Laud's leadership
it was associated in the public mind, not only
with efforts to raise the low standard of reverence,
and to enforce ecclesiastical discipline, but also
with ceremonial innovations and anti-Protestant
teaching. Puritanism became the mark of the
religious Conservatives who stood by the Eliza-
bethan Settlement of the Church. The course
of domestic politics became ever more troubled
as the rising independence of the nation, stimu-
lated by the change of religion and the war with
Spain, came into collision with the conceptions
of government which dominated Charles I. and

90 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM in

his advisers. Arminianism and extravagant doc-
trines of Divine right became associated together,
and Puritanism began that connection with
popular poHtics which has continued ever since.
With the breaking out of the conflict between the
King and the ParKament Puritanism entered on a
new phase. The revolutionary years between
1640, when the Long Parliament assembled, and
1660, when Charles II. was restored, have deter-
mined the subsequent course of English religion.
Four facts are clearly discernible. First, the
religious cleavage became identified with the
political conflict^ the King and the Church stood
together against the Parliament and Presbyterian-
ism. As the conflict proceeded and the Royalists
were finally overwhelmed, the Monarchy and the
episcopal system fell together. Together they
suffered hardships and humiliations in exile.
Together they shared exultation in a triumph so
complete and unexpected as to appear almost
miraculous. It is no wonder, therefore, that an
extravagant royalism became characteristic of
Anglicanism, and has survived to this day in the
familiar division of political parties. Broadly,
Anglicans are Conservatives, and Nonconformists
are Liberals or Radicals. These party divisions
are wearing thin before the rising of new issues
and new dividing-lines, but they are not yet
wholly obsolete-

Ill PURITANISM 91

Secondly, the war gave an impetus to sectarian-
ism. Authority was weakened by the conflict,
individualism was immensely stimulated, the final
victory was won by an army headed by a Congre-
gationalist, Cromwell, and largely composed of
sectaries. Richard Baxter, the saint and exponent
of Puritanism, has left a striking account of
Cromwell's army which he visited after the Battle
of Naseby to learn the fate of some friends who
had been among the combatants. He arrived
with the cheerful assumption in his mind that
" when the Court News-book told the world
of the crowds of Anabaptists in our armies " it
was '^ a mere lie," but he left with the sorrowful
conviction that the facts were far worse than the
worst reports. He found the soldiers absorbed
by the most subversive speculations, political and
religious, and withal very confident of their
approaching triumph :

" They said, What were the Lords of England but
William the Conqueror's colonels ? or the Barons but his
majors ? or the Knights but his captains ? They plainly
showed me that they thought God's Providence would
cast the trust of religion and the kingdom upon them as
conquerors : they made nothing of all the miost wise and'
godly in the armies and garrisons, that were not of their
way. Fer fas aut nefas (By law or without it) they
were resolved to take down, not only bishops, liturgy,
and ceremonies, but all that did withstand their way."*

* Vide Reliquice BaxteriancSy p. 51 (London, 1696).

92 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iii

With characteristic courage Baxter engaged in
argument with these military theologians, and
discovered running through their extravagances
a principle, odious to himself, but destined in
the future to gain wide acceptance and find fruit-
ful application :

" Their most frequent and vehement disputes were for
Liberty of Conscience, as they called it, that the civil
magistrate had nothing to do to determine of anything
in manners of religion by constraint or restraint, but
every man might not only hold, but preach and do in
matters of religion what he pleased; that the civil magis-
trate hath nothing to do but with civil things, to keep
the peace and protect the Church liberties."

The programme of the Liberation Society —
complete religious equality secured by the com-
plete secularization of the State — was already
taking shape in the minds of the English sectaries.
That programme, however, was not commended
by its first advocates. A wider impression was
made by the brutality of their behaviour than by
the reasonableness of their professed ideal. It is
probably true that the support of the sectaries
delayed the triumph of toleration for many years.

In the third place, the Great Rebellion created
an association between Nonconformity and illi-
teracy^ social inferiority^ and fanaticism^ which
has^ ferhap^ done more than anything else to em-
bitter the religious life of England^ and has not even

Ill PURITANISM 93

yet wholly disapfeared. The leaders of Eliza-
bethan Puritanism had been learned men, able
to cross swords in controversy with Whitgift,
Bancroft, and Hooker : even some of the founders
of the sects had been educated at the Universities.
At the Hampton Court Conference in 1604 Puri-
tanism was represented by scholars. The con-
forming Puritans of the early Stuart period were
men of learning. Davenant and Ussher were
the most erudite members of the Episcopate,
and both were Puritans. In the Universities
Puritanism had its citadel, for the Calvinist
theology was supreme, and it allied itself natur-
ally with the Puritan habit. Nor was it only
among ecclesiastics that Puritanism prevailed. It
counted the most eminent statesmen and the
leading nobles among its patrons. The rise of
the sectaries to power in the Civil War created a
schism between Puritanism and learning, or rather
brought to rapid completion a process which
had begun some years earlier. Controversy had
been changing its form since the forces of the
unreformed Church had been rallied and re-
organized by the Jesuits. The simple polemic
of the Protestant " Gospellers " required no
greater equipment than the English Bible, ability
to read it, and a boundless self-confidence. But
as the range of debate extended in the hands of
the professional gladiators of the churches, there

94 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iii

was need of a more ample armament and a more
exact method. The sectaries were perpetuating
a kind of controversy which had already become
obsolete among scholars, and, if the political
crisis had not intervened, would probably have
passed quietly away. Not the least disastrous
consequence of the Civil War was that it arrested
this salutary natural process, gave new vigour
to declining errors, and placed ignorance and
enthusiasm in possession of power.

Puritanism was thus compromised by the sects.
It was unjust but natural that the execution of
Laud in 1645, and still more that of Charles in
1649, should have provoked resentment and horror
which excluded discrimination and fair play.
How deep an aversion was created by the ex-
periences of the Commonwealth may be suffi-
ciently disclosed by the brutal wit of Butler's
HudibraSj the malignant rhetoric of South,
and the language of the service added to the
Prayer- Book for use on January 30th. It must
not, indeed, be supposed that the religious effect
of the Commonwealth had been wholly bad.
Religion was carried into the use and wont of the
common people; the Bible became the book
of the English proletariat. A new type of pas-
toral ministry, pre-eminently illustrated by
Baxter at Kidderminster, was added to the reli-
gious tradition of England. The intense emo-

Ill PURITANISM 95

tional strain of the time forced spiritual genius
into expression. English literature was enriched
by a classic, Bunyan's Pilgrim'' s Progress^ and the
most original of denominational types was added
to English religion by George Fox; but the
definite alienation of the deeper Christianity
of the common people from the National Church
dates from this period.

Fourthly, there was bequeathed to Anglicans
and Nonconformists alike a legacy of injury which
has ever since hindered their mutual understanding.
The iconoclastic violence which swept over the
country left everywhere permanent memorials
of its presence. Cathedrals and parish churches
bore the traces of sectarian outrage, and per-
petuated its memory; the country houses had
been roughly handled, and they contributed to
countless families an ever valid reason for private
resentment. When the situation was reversed, and
the persecuted themselves played the persecutor,
the miserable history was repeated. All over the
country in middle-class families there survived
memories of oppression and hardship, which
formed and still form a silent obstacle to religious
peace. '' Black Bartholomew," the eviction of
the Nonconformists under the Act of Uniformity,
is from time to time commemorated by Non-
conformists, and the commemoration, however
natural and legitimate, tends to keep alive the

96 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iii

memory of ancient wrongs which had better be
suffered to die. The violence of the Common-
wealth was the real cause of the vindictive proce-
dures of the Restoration, and a principal, perhaps
the principal, reason of the failure of compre-
hension in 1660 and 1689. The Caroline Code
is only explicable as an example of panic-stricken
legislation.

Nonconformity has been saved by its wrongs.
Its theology was already obsolete in the seven-
teenth century. Its improvised polities, based
on ill- understood texts from the Bible, have not
been conspicuously successful. Its bald Judaic
worship has little attraction for educated men.
Only as waging a manly warfare for political
liberty has it justified its continued existence.
Here, indeed, it is difficult to over-estimate the
value of its services to mankind.

The struggle for Toleration ended in the com-
promise of 1689. Dissent might exist and or-
ganize itself, on giving pledges of orthodoxy,
and accepting a position of civil subordination.
The Toleration Act required from the tolerated
ministers subscription to thirty- six out of the
thirty- nine Articles, the registration of their
chapels, and the licence of the Bishops. It left
the Dissenters subject to the disqualifications
created by the legislation of Charles II. Of these
the most serious, because the most subtly harmful.

Ill PURITANISM 97

was their exclusion from the Universities. The
association of Dissent with ignorance, which was
the legacy of the Commonwealth, was streng-
thened and largely, justified. Yet even the modest
concessions of the Toleration Act were not secure
until the change of dynasty. The last years of
Anne witnessed a revival of persecution which
proved the strength of Anglican resentment.
Had the Queen lived, or been succeeded on the
throne by her brother, it is not probable that the
Dissenters would have continued to enjoy even
the limited benefits of the Toleration Act. The
accession of the Elector of Hanover to the throne
of Great Britain gave permanence to the policy
of Toleration, and clothed the Dissenters with
political importance as interested supporters of
the Protestant Succession.

The struggle for toleration was followed by
the struggle for civil equality. History again
repeated itself. The effect of the long war with
France in the generation before Waterloo had an
influence upon the general life of England hardly,
if at all, inferior to that of the long Spanish
war in the sixteenth century. It cemented the
alliance between Dissent and popular politics, and
it hardened Anglicanism against reform. Still
more potent, however, was a domestic factor,
the rising of a new form of Dissent.

The Methodist movement arose within the

7

98 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM m

National Church, and was inspired by no desire
to alter its system of doctrine or of government.
It was a crusade against the practical paganism
of the people, and it stirred a new and coercive
sense of spiritual obligation both in the Church
and in the State. When, however, the movement
came into collision with the hierarchy, and drifted,
or was driven, out of fellowship. with the Church,
it tended to become merged in the ranks of
Dissent. This process had gone far before the
French Revolution broke on the world, and it
has now apparently reached completion; for all
practical purposes Methodism is indistinguishable
from Dissent.

The French Revolution soon took an anti-
Christian character, and consequently the long
war against it had, for the general body of Eng-
lish Christians, the aspect of a religious crusade.
Whatever disposition there had been to sympa-
thize with a revolution in France among those
who boasted of being the political heirs of the
earlier revolution in England was destroyed by
the horror of the French atrocities and the scandal
of French atheism. With the rise of Napoleon
the war became a conflict for national indepen-
dence. All domestic controversies were silent
before an overwhelming peril, and all agitation
for reform died away before the plain require-
ment of national unity. When, however, at

Ill PURITANISM 99

length victory had been won, the old questions
were raised again, and had to be answered in
novel circumstances. The half- century which
included the French wars, and ended with the
Reform Act of 1832, witnessed the beginnings
of the process of social transformation which has
made England the most completely industrialized
member of the European Commonwealth. The
effect on English Dissent was twofold — on the
one hand political, on the other religious.

The new agitation for reform allied itself
naturally with the old agitation for the removal
of civil disabilities. Radicalism and Dissent ran
together in the groove of a common purpose.
Both tended to take up an attitude of hostility to
the Established Church, which of all the national
institutions seemed farthest removed from the
spirit of democracy, most closely identified with
social and political tenets which had become
repulsive, and least able to justify its ample
privileges by the plea of its public utility. The
old religious differences between Anglicans and
Nonconformists became more than ever bound up
with the cleavage of class, economic interest, and
political ideals. All this, from a religious point
of view, was extremely unfortunate. Happily
there was another side to the history of the time.

The new concern for the spiritual welfare of the
people created by the Methodist movement had

100 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iii

induced a notable extension of evangelistic effort.
In the crowded centres of industrial life Dissent
had little or no connection with the old subjects
of debate. In many places it had the ground to
itself, for the provision of religious ministrations
secured by the parochial system did not extend
to districts which had been uninhabited, or
inhabited but sparsely, in the distant period which
had witnessed the organization of the parishes.
Relieved from the practical necessity of doing
battle with the Anglican enemy in the gate,
Dissenters were free to develop the more truly
religious attributes; they concerned themselves
no more with denouncing Anglican corruptions,
or vindicating the excellences of their own system,
but with saving souls. In all directions there
sprang up the ugly little brick chapels which be-
came the spiritual homes of multitudes for whom
the Church of England made no provision. Thus
there has come into existence a new type of
Dissenter, who is held to his denomination, not
by a definite conviction of its exclusive validity
or even of its superiority, but by the respectable
title of an hereditary claim. " It is absurd to
call us Dissenters," said an old Durham miner,
when explaining his religious position, " for,"
he added, " there was nothing for us to dissent
from." Present relations between Anglicanism
and Nonconformity cannot be understood until

Ill PURITANISM loi

it is realized how complicated, ancient, and
various is the historical background of the
existing situation.

In the course of the nineteenth century the
long battle for civil rights has been completely
v^on, for the limitation to Anglicans of the Crown
and the Lord Chancellorship can hardly be
reckoned a disability for Nonconformists as such.
The destruction of the elaborate fabric of privilege
which had been erected for the security of the
National Church will not, indeed, be completed
until the Church has been disestablished, but
none of the remaining privileges impinge on the
rights or conveniences of Nonconformists. No
hardship of any kind now attaches to religious
Dissent in England. The absence of grievances
removes the principal historic condition of
Dissent, and goes far to destroy its raison d^etre.
At least, it can no longer connect itself with the
incidental but important task of championing
the national Uberty. With the advent of demo-
cracy, the political work of Dissent has been finally
performed, and for the future it must find its
justifications solely in the religious sphere. Here,
in common with the older forms of organized
Christianity, the Dissenting Churches have been
affected by the social and intellectual conditions
of the modern epoch. The decline of the middle
classes, which is the salient feature of social

102 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iii

development during the last two generations, has
reduced the importance of the very section of
the community from which the members of the
Dissenting Churches have in the past been mainly-
drawn. Dissenters, therefore, no longer count
for so much in the political life of the country.
In vindicating for themselves a right to full access
to the Universities, and in promoting the pro-
vision of efficient popular education, the Dissenters
have brought their systems under a criticism which
is by no means invariably sympathetic. For the
great extension of interest in historical studies
does not incline men's minds towards the recent
and hastily improvised systems which Noncon-
formity has inherited from its obscure and
troubled past. The educated imagination at-
taches to the noble monuments of the national
history, and these are mainly ecclesiastical. Litur-
gical worship harmonizes better with the admira-
tion for Gothic architecture than the crude
improvisations of Dissenting religious habit : and
the rigours of Calvinistic literalism, repulsive
to modern students, have lingered longest in
the chapels. Biblical criticism has undercut the
main assumptions of the reasoning by which the
founders of Dissent justified their distinctive
doctrines and forms of polity. There is an un-
bridgeable chasm between the trust-deeds of
the chapels and the teachings of their pulpits.

Ill PURITANISM 103

The rising standard of taste, aesthetic and literary,
has come into open conflict with the severe and
limited tradition of Nonconformity. " The Non-
conformist conscience " has the unfairness, and
also the effect, of a successful caricature.

If, indeed, there had been no counteracting
influence it is difficult to see how the Dissenting
systems could have persisted under the conditions
of the modern world. In point of fact they not
only have persisted, but have greatly extended
their principles, and succeeded in gathering
within their official ministrations a large and
increasing proportion of scholars and divines.
Two counteracting influences can certainly be
perceived. Both have their roots in the seven-
teenth century but their principal expression in
the nineteenth. At the end of Elizabeth's reign
there was a brisk religious intercourse between
England and Holland. It was natural that the
English sectaries should take refuge in Holland
when the persecution in their own country be-
came insupportable. The English government
would seem to have acquiesced in this self- banish-
ment of disaffected subjects. Early in the seven-
teenth century the Puritan emigration to America
began, and was facilitated by the government
as not only relieving the situation at home but
assisting in the development of the colonies
across the Atlantic. It is just three centuries

104 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iii

since the Mayflower set forth on its historic
voyage. Thus the rehgion of the EngHsh colo-
nists received from the first a Puritan stamp.
With the rapid development of the colonies the
Puritan version of Christianity was far more widely
extended until, at the present time, it is the pre-
vailing type of Anglo-Saxon Christianity. The
great variety of sectarian organizations consists
with a substantial identity of religious type.
Anglicanism outside of E^gland is a compara-
tively recent growth, and, although within the
last two generations there has been a great ex-
tension of the Anglican Episcopate in America
and the Colonies, the majority of English-speaking
Christians outside of England itself are not
Anglicans. Very soon after establishing them-
selves in America the Puritans began the work of
Foreign Missions. John Eliot, the Apostle of
the Indians, was an ordained clergyman of the
Church of England, but had found the atmosphere
of the home Church so uncongenial that he emi-
grated to America in 1631. He was a man of
a truly apostolic spirit. For more than half a
century he laboured at the conversion of the
Indians. In 1649 there was formed in England
The Corporation Jor the Promotion and Propagation
of the Gospel among the Indians of New England.
With the assistance of the funds which it supplied,
Eliot published his version of the Bible in the

Ill PURITANISM 105

Indian language in 1663, and this was followed by
many other publications. " There was no man
on earth whom I honoured above him," said
Baxter, and indeed he was a man worthy of all
honour. It was, perhaps, no slight evidence of
the homage which his character and labours
inspired that the Corporation was revived and
perpetuated by the government of Charles II.
Eliot was the first of a great succession of foreign
missionaries who have carried the Gospel into
almost every part of the heathen world. It is
to the immortal honour of the Puritans that they
thus led the way in Protestant Foreign Missions.
The great Anglican missions followed the prece-
dent which the Puritans had created. English
Dissent has gained in strength and prestige by
its connection with the colonial and missionary
churches, towards which it stands in the character
of founder.

Still more important, perhaps, has been the
development within the Church of England of a
spirit and a teaching hostile to the Reformation
itself. So long as the Church of England could
justly be described as " the best and surest bul-
wark of Protestantism, the glory of the Reforma-
tion, and the express image of the purest anti-
quity," there was always force in the argument
that Nonconformists suffered from a lack of
proportion, and, in their zeal for non-essentials.

io6 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iii

were endangering the very principles of the re-
formed rehgion. Under the first Stuart Kings
the EngHsh Church began to draw away from
the Continental Churches, and to insist with
ever-waxing emphasis upon the importance of its
distinctive poHty. The Church of England was
transformed by Archbishop Laud, and though
indeed it remained strongly anti- papal it began
to affect the style and advance the claim of a
Catholic Church, from which non- episcopal
churches were if so facto excluded. With the
expulsion of James II. and the accession of
William of Orange the Protestant character of
the English Church and nation was effectively
demonstrated, but the extent of the breach with
Anglican sentiment was disclosed by the schism
of the Non-Jurors, with whom the Anglo-
Catholicism of Laud seemed to have perished.
Early in the nineteenth century that tradition
was revived in the Oxford Movement. If, as at
first seemed probable, that movement had in its
turn expired by the secession of its leaders, the
Protestant character of the Church of England
would have remained as undisputed at the present
time as it was in the eighteenth century. The
rapid extension of the movement within the
English Church had the effect of transferring
to the Dissenters the responsibility of defending
the principles of the Reformation. The Trac-

Ill PURITANISM 107

tarlan Movement has steadily developed in a
Romeward direction; Anglicans have been accus-
tomed to dissociate themselves from Protestant
interests and to dislike and even repudiate the
Protestant name. It has followed that Non-
conformity has acquired a new raison ^etre^ and
now commands the sympathetic interest of all
Englishmen who regard the Roman version of
Christianity as unfavourable to political liberty
and national character. Nonconformists, more-
over, are rapidly moving outside the hampering
sectarianism which disfigured their earlier history,
and movements towards union are leading the
way towards a larger federation of Nonconfor-
mists and Protestants. In the National Council
of the Evangelical Free Churches the broad lines of
a united Protestant Church have been projected,
and the time does not seem far distant when
Puritan Christianity will have successfully eman-
cipated itself from the difficulties bequeathed
from the past, and adapted itself completely to
the novel conditions of the modern world.

It has been necessary to survey the history and
present condition of Nonconformity in order
to understand and appreciate its influence upon
Anglicanism. That influence, it would appear,
has been almost uniformly unwholesome. Con-
troversy rarely improves the spiritual quality of
the controversialists, and almost inevitably leads

io8 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iii

to a distortion of perspectives and the lowering
of the spiritual level. Persecution hardens the
persecutor and narrows the persecuted. It
would appear certain that the long controversy
with the Puritans, raised for the most part on
issues which were comparatively trivial, had the
effect of causing Anglicans to emphasize and
exaggerate features in their religious system which
were not of primary importance. The exag-
gerated importance laid on episcopacy is a case
in point. Here, however, the influence of the
controversy with Rome was perhaps even more
potent than that of conflict with Nonconformity.
We have seen how the sectarian violences of the
Commonwealth bred in Anglicans an undying
disgust of religious enthusiasm. This was ex-
tremely unfortunate, for religious enthusiasm can
only be suppressed and repudiated by a Church
at the risk of disowning the greater manifesta-
tions of the Divine Spirit. In point of fact, the
tragic disaster which drove the Methodists out
of the fellowship of the Church of England was
the result of an unreasoning dislike of religious
enthusiasm and a deep-seated suspicion of new
departures in spiritual methods. Again, there
can be no question that the conflict with Non-
conformity, envenomed as it was by divergent
political influences, difference of social types,
and sometimes also by the conflict of economic

Ill PURITANISM 109

interest, had the effect of disinclining Church-
men to admit and remove abuses. Nothing,
perhaps, has compromised the Church of England
so gravely in the view of the labouring classes as
the consistent refusal of Anglican Churchmen as
a whole to remove anomalies and abuses which
offend the Christian conscience and necessarily
hamper Christian effort. The political action of
the Bishops as peers of Parliament has seemed to
identify the hierarchy with the unflinching and
indiscriminating championship of privilege. It
is certainly the fact that the Anglican Bishops at
the present time find themselves at every turn
confronted with a heavy historic indictment
against episcopacy, based on the consistent oppo-
sition to reform which the Bishops maintained
throughout the reforming epoch. There is,
no doubt, a large measure of injustice in the
indictment, but none can deny its plausibility
and substantial truth.

LECTURE IV

THE ROMAN CONTROVERSY

The controversy with the Roman Church has
been one of the principal factors in the develop-
ment of Anglicanism. In the early phases of the
Reformation, the demand for changes in the
ecclesiastical system proceeded from within the
medieval Church, and were debated always with
the supposition in men's minds that agreement
might be reached, and the incalculable loss of an
ecclesiastical disruption averted. Schism was a
spiritual calamity which no controversialist could
contemplate without consternation and repug-
nance. When at his degradation (1556) Cranmer
appealed " unto a free General Council, that shall
hereafter lawfully be, and in a sure place," he was
in fact taking his stand on familiar ground and
echoing the language of the earlier time. He
disclaimed the character of novelty for his doc-
trine, and refused to be described as a heretick :

" I may err, but heretick I cannot be, forasmuch as I
am ready in all things to follow the judgment of the most
sacred word of God and of the holy catholic church,

no

IV THE ROMAN CONTROVERSY in

desiring none other thing than meekly and gently to be
taught, if anywhere (which God forbid) I have swerved
from the truth."

Looking back with the guidance of later history

we can see that this appeal could not possibly

succeed. Had it been frankly allowed, the state

of Christendom rendered the gathering of a free

General Council altogether impracticable. Had

the Papacy been as well disposed towards religious

reformation as it was in fact relentlessly hostile,

the conflicting secular interests would have

rendered effective action impossible. So much

had already been demonstrated by the failure

of the reforming efforts of the preceding age.

The triumph of the General Council over the

Papacy had been both partial and temporary.

Constance and Basel were the monuments of

a great failure and a sorrowful disillusionment.

Religious reformation, men knew well in their

hearts, had even less to hope for from a General

Council than from a Pope, for while a sincere

Reformer might conceivably have mounted the

papal throne, no assembly of medieval hierarchs

could have seriously addressed itself to the drastic

changes which were needed. Had Cranmer

appeared before a General Council, he must needs

have experienced the same treatment as John Huss

had received from the Fathers of Constance.

The political interest of the Popes had always

112 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iv

been a more dominating influence on their action
than any moral or reHgious considerations.
They were incapacitated for the task of eccle-
siastical reformation by ^heir secular concerns
as well as by their moral inadequacy. No Pope
was ever a free agent. The demands of the con-
science could never be satisfied by the methods
of diplomacy. Far into Elizabeth's reign, in-
deed, the door of reconciliation between Rome
and England remained formally unclosed, but
controversy had been taking an ever more funda-
mental character, and, when the Counter- Refor-
mation organized by the Jesuits had been au-
thoritatively adopted by the Council of Trent
(1545-63), the whole situation was transformed.
There was no question now of making terms
with the Papacy. The axe was laid at the root
of medieval religion. An alternative version of
Christianity was formulated, and presented as the
Gospel marvellously recovered after a millennium
of eclipse. The maintenance in England of the
medieval polity, parochial, diocesan, and pro-
vincial, created a situation which has no precise
parallel elsewhere, for the hierarchy, though
shorn of its pomp, stripped of much of its wealth,
and greatly reduced in its number by the abolition
of the monasteries, remained an integral part of
the national system, and entered as such into the
foreign politics of the kingdom. In the process

IV THE ROMAN CONTROVERSY 113

by which the Anglican Bishops recovered much
of their old character, and provoked against
themselves the suspicion and resentment of the
more ardent advocates of the Reformation, an
important place must be assigned to causes which
had no connection with religion. Elizabeth
could not ailord to abandon episcopacy. The
spiritual peers numbered no less than twenty-
six against the fifty-nine lay peers, and they
secured to her government control of the Upper
House. By keeping bishopricks vacant and her-
self absorbing the revenues, the Queen assisted
her treasury. The Episcopate in England seemed
at one time likely to shrivel into something akin
to the " tulchan " Bishops in Scotland — i,e,j
sponges to absorb the episcopal revenues for
squeezing into the royal exchequer. It was im-
portant for Elizabeth, while yet her government
was recent and weakly established, to emphasize
the diiference between the ordered religion
of the Church of England and the anarchic
movements on the Continent, which were
both disloyal and unorthodox. The congruity
of monarchy and episcopacy became a favourite
theme of Anglican apologists. Against the Pope
they could urge both the numerous medieval
precedents of hierarchical revolt against secular
sovereignty, and the exorbitant theory of papal
supremacy which the Jesuits elaborated and

8

114 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iv

defended; against the Puritans they could point
out the suggestive association of Presbyterianism
and rebellion.

The Church of England was in a special degree
odious to the Papacy, for the method and character
of its Reformation rendered it a far more for-
midable adversary than any other reformed
communion. Against the Lutherans of Gernaany
the pov^er of the Emperor could be invoked, for
they evidently threatened the unity of the Empire.
Against the Calvinists in the Low Countries, in
Switzerland, and in France, it was easy to enlist
the power of the governments, which were plainly
threatened by the democratic temper of Calvin-
ism. Her political interest compelled Elizabeth
to assist the Huguenots and the Dutch, but her
political theory would rather have led her to
co-operate in their suppression. When James
succeeded to the same situation, he found that
there were serious scruples in some minds as to
the rightness of assisting rebels. The elaborate
canons, adopted unanimously by both Convo-
cations in 1606, laid down the obligation of civil
obedience in such absolute terms that the neces-
sary distinction between governments de jure and
de facto seemed to be ignored. With his usual
acuteness the King perceived this, and made it a
reason for withholding his approval. In England
the Reformation had been itself originated and

IV THE ROMAN CONTROVERSY 115

carried through by the Sovereign, whose power
had been greatly increased by the process. So
far from the breach with Rome having involved
any weakening of the monarchical idea, the pre-
cise opposite had been the effect. The English
Reformers clothed the kingship with the attri-
butes of the Jewish monarchs and the Roman
emperors. In their hands the Old Testament
became the Divine Charter of Absolutism. In
the canons of 1604, and at greater length in the
abortive canons of 1606, Bancroft elaborated the
Anglican doctrine of kingship, and the unfor-
tunate canons of 1640 completed the statement.
The King of England was plainly a more absolute
Sovereign than his medieval predecessors, and,
so far as ecclesiastical affairs were concerned,
than his brother- monarchs. It followed that
the English Reformation provided an attractive
precedent which other Sovereigns, emulous of a
like autocracy in the Church, might be tempted
to follow. The idea of a national church had very
obvious recommendations in the age of national
monarchies, and the conservative and constitu-
tional character of the English Reformation
rendered it intelligible and even attractive to
men bred in the medieval tradition. The eccle-
siastical changes in England stood obviously in
the line of familiar and recent precedents. Even
within the Council of Trent the nature and extent

ii6 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iv

of episcopal authority were obstinately debated.
Episcopacy had nothing to fear from the appeal
to antiquity, which certainly disclosed a Papacy
far different from that which the men of the
sixteenth century had to reckon with. There
was nothing wholly novel or wholly unattractive
about an episcopal revolt against papal authority.
The superiority of a General Council to the Pope
had been the principle of the great reforming
efforts of the fifteenth century.

The Roman controversialists found the Church
of England very embarrassing. As against non-
episcopal Reformers in revolt against their own
Sovereigns, they could argue boldly that Rome
stood for the tradition of Christendom and the
principle of civil order. Neither claim held
good against the episcopal national Church of
England. Here the arguments were reversed.
The Anglican champions maintained an older
tradition than that of Rome, and displayed a
more convincing concern for civil authority. Of
course, when the deeper issues of the Reformation
were in debate, the controversy was transferred to
a plane where neither ecclesiastical tradition nor
secular expediency could carry decisive weight.

The Counter- Reformation, organized by the
Jesuits, met with such considerable success that
the total defeat of the Reformation on the
Continent seemed no impossible result. Burnet,

IV THE ROMAN CONTROVERSY 117

writing at the end of the seventeenth century,
reviewed the progress of the Reformation, and
said that " it had now for above an hundred years
made a full stand, and in most places had rather
lost ground than gained any," and he attributed
the fact to " the reformation that Popery had been
forced to make," which " had in a great measure
stopped the progress of the reformation of the
doctrine and worship that did so long carry every-
thing before it."

Sir Edwin Sandys, a son of the Archbishop of
York, the pupil and intimate friend of Richard
Hooker, one of the most respected and influential
of English politicians in the reign of James L,
has left on record his impressions of the religious
situation in Europe at the close of the sixteenth
century. His Survey of the State of Religion in the
Western Parts of the World is addressed to Arch-
bishop Whitgift, and dated " from Paris, April 9th,
1599." I^ ^^ ^^ illuminating and suggestive
description of Christendom from the point of
view of an educated Anglican in the age which
witnessed the definite establishment of the Church
of England. He points out that the rapid initial
successes of the Reformers had taught wisdom
to their adversaries, who soon began to turn their
enemy's weapons upon themselves with such
effect that the whole appearance of the conflict
had been changed. The Protestants no longer

ii8 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iv

went forward in a course of assured and rapid
victory. The final issue had become doubtful,
and triumph even seemed to incline to the well-
disciplined forces of the Papacy. The pulpit,
the public debate, the pamphlet, the learned
controversial work, the education of youth — all
the potent instruments of Protestant warfare had
been taken over by the Jesuits, and were being
used with a calculated policy and a concentrated
purpose which Protestants could not in their
divided state hope to equal. Especially in organiz-
ing schools the skill and zeal of the Order had been
conspicuous. Always the educational effort had
been subordinated to the controversial purpose :

" In all places wherever they can plant their nests,
they open Free Schools for all studies of humanity. To
these flock the best wits, and principal men's sons, in so
great abundance that wherever they settle other colleges
become desolate, or frequented only by the baser sort
and of heavier metal; and in truth such is their diligence
and dexterity in instructing, that even the Protestants in
some places send their sons unto their schools upon desire
to have them prove excellent in those arts they teach.
Besides which, being in truth but a bait and allurement
whereto to fasten their principal and final hook, they
plant in their scholars with great exactness and skill the
roots of their religion, and nourish them with an extreme
hatred and detestation of the adverse party. ... I
shall not need here to insert their singular diligence and
cunning and enticing not seldom the most noble of their
scholars, and oftentimes the most adorned with the graces

IV THE ROMAN CONTROVERSY 119

of nature and industry; especially if they have any likeli-
hood of any vy^ealthy succession, to abandon their friends,
and to profess their order (a thing daily practised by them
in all places) ; yea, wherever they espy any youth of rarer
spirit, they w^ill be tampering with him, though he be
the only son and solace of his father. . . .

" But this point of their schools and instructing youth
is thought of such moment by men of wisdom and judg-
ment, being taught so by very experience and trial thereof,
that the planting of a good college of Jesuits in any place
is esteemed the only sure way to replant that Religion,
and in time to eat out the contrary. This course hold
they in all Germany, in Savoy, and in other places; and
the excluding it from France is infinitely regretted, and
that which makes them uncertain what will become of
that Kingdom."*

While, then, the situation on the Continent
was becoming so unfavourable, the Church of
England stood out as the very citadel of the
Reformation. The traditional policy of the
island realm was illustrated in the ecclesiastical
as in the secular sphere. England obstructed the
triumph of a single power on the Continent of
Europe. Elizabeth might dislike the Reformers
in France, Holland, and Scotland, but her
political instinct would not suffer her to desert
them. In all these countries she assisted a type
of Reformed Christianity which she would not
tolerate within her own dominions, and she
earned for herself the plenary hatred of an
* Vide StaU of Religion, p. 90/. (London, 1673).

120 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iv

enemy with whose principles of government she
mainly agreed. The political ruin of England
became indispensable to the Counter- Reformation
precisely because in England national indepen-
dence was the common interest of Church and
State. It was impossible to overcome the Re-
formation on the Continent so long as the Conti-
nental Reformers found a base of operations and
an inexhaustible recruiting- ground in the island
kingdom. Patriotism and Churchmanship be-
came identified in the realm of Elizabeth, and
the cause of Rome became indissolubly associated
with treason in English minds. The defeat of
the Spanish Armada (1588) seemed to add an
almost miraculous demonstration of Divine ap-
proval to the national cause. Bishop Carleton
(1559-1628) gave expression to the general view
in his treatise, A Thankful Remembrance of God^s
Mercies in an Historic Collection of the Deliver-
ances of the Church and State of England from the
beginning of Queen Elizabeth^ published in 1624:

" Let others boast of their strength or wisdom, or deep
policies, their invincible armies by sea and land; we glory
in the name of our God, which hath done so great things
for us. If a man with an unpartial eye look upon these,
though he be an enemy, though he be a Jesuit, he must
needs confess that God was on our side. . . . Now this
being a thing confessed on all sides, that God was with
us against the Spaniard, why will not our adversaries,
that are men of understanding, enter into the considera-

IV THE ROMAN CONTROVERSY 121

tion of this cause which God hath so often and so mightily
maintained ?"*

The years from Elizabeth's accession in 1558
to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642 were,
save for the brief revolt of the Northern earls in
1569, years of unbroken tranquillity in England
itself, but they synchronized with the religious
wars of the Continent. It was the golden age
of the English National Church, when the ec-
clesiastical system was strong, not only by the
patronage of the Crown, but also by the affection
of the people. Learning was honoured and
rewarded by a learned Sovereign at the head
of a learned and relatively wealthy hierarchy.
Religion, in the picturesque phrase of Edmund
Burke, " exalted her mitred front in courts and
parliaments." This was the period to which
Anglicans in later times looked back with regretful
admiration. Foreign Protestants regarded the
island Church with a wondering envy. A critical
scholar, little disposed to exaggerate the claims
of the English Church, has described the meas-
ure of justification that existed for this large
repute :

" Though the Jacobean divines do not constitute an
epoch of learning, they represent a stage on the road
towards it. Critical enquiry was not only unknown, but

* Vide A thankful Remembrance^ p. 159.

122 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iv

was proscribed. Yet a zeal for reading and patristic
research characterized them, which abated the raw
ignorance of the preceding century. They were led into
the region of learning. Barren as their controversial
pamphlets are, yet theology approached the ground of
scientific criticism more nearly than amid the bandying
of scriptural texts, which had been the controversial
form of the century of the reformation. Anglicanism
was purging itself of its fanaticism, and leaving that
element to the puritans. It is true that all study was
theological, and that the theology was contentious, not
scientific. But at any rate there was study. A German
visitor, young Calixtus, always said that ' his tutors in
Germany had not done as much in spurring him on to
the study of ecclesiastical history as had the English
bishops, and the well-stored libraries he had seen among
them ' during his visit in 1612. The influence of
Andrewes on Cambridge could not but be beneficial.
We find him ' making continual search and enquiry to
know what hopeful young men were in the university;
his chaplain and friends receiving a charge from him to
certify what hopeful and towardly young wits they met
with from time to time.' The instructions issued by the
crown to the vice-chancellor of Oxford, ' according to
which young students were to be incited to bestow their
time in the fathers and councils, schoolmen, histories and
controversies, and not to insist too long in compendiums
and abbreviations,' are in the same direction. ' You
must not suppose,' Casaubon writes to Saumaise, ' that
this people is a barbarous people; nothing of the sort, it
loves letters and cultivates them, sacred learning especially.
Indeed, if I am not mistaken, the soundest part of the
whole reformation is to be found here in England, where

IV THE ROMAN CONTROVERSY 123

the study of antiquity flourishes together with zeal for the
truth; "*

Papists, writes Sir Edwyn Sandys, felt " hatred
for the Lutheran, the author of their calamity;
but hatred and fear both of the Calvinist only,
whom they account the only growing enemy, and
dangerous to their state." They were prepared
to give " some blind hope to the Lutheran of
quiet and toleration so he will join against these
the fretters of both." The Church of England
provoked a distinctive resentment as combining
a Calvinist theology with a more than Lutheran
moderation of temper and system, and still more
as being inseparably linked with the waxing power
of the English State, which was ever more plainly
coming to take a decisive influence in European
politics as the guardian of the Balance of Power.

" But of all places their desires and attempts to recover
England have been always, and are still, the strongest;
which, although in their more sober moods, sundry of
them will acknowledge to have been the only nation
that took the right way of justitial reformation in com-
parison of others who have run headlong rather to a
tumultuous innovation (so they conceive it), whereas
that alteration which hath been in England was brought
in with peaceable and orderly proceeding by general
consent of the Prince and whole realm representatively
assembled in solemn Parliament, a great part of their own
clergy according and conforming themselves unto it:

* Vide Mark Pattison, Isaac Casaubon^ p. 327.

124 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iv

no Luther, no Calvin, the square of their faith; what
publick discussing and long deliberation did persuade
them to be faulty, that taken away, the succession of
Bishops and vocation of Ministers continued; the dignity
and state of the Clergy preserved; the honour and
solemnity of the service of God not abased, the more
ancient usages of the Church not cancelled; in sum, no
humour of affecting contrariety, but a charitable en-
deavour rather of conformity with the Church of Rome
in whatsoever they thought not gainsaying to the express
Law of God, which is the only approvable way, in regard
of the power and renown of the prince, and of their
exemplary policy in government of the state, in regard
that they concurring entirely with neither side, yet
reverenced with both, are the fitter and abler to work
unity between them, and to be an umpire also, director
and swayer of all, whensoever there should be occasion
of assembling their councils, or of conjoining their forces
for the common defence; and especially for that it is the
only nation of the Protestant party able to encounter
and affront their King."*

That was the core of the gravamen of the
Papacy against the Church of England. It
obstructed the triumph of the Counter- Refor-
mation which had become identified with the
ambitious policy of the Spanish King. Sir Edwin
Sandys writes with the patriotic exaggeration of
an English Churchman, but he places his finger
on the true reason for the peculiar malignity of
Roman polemics against Anglicanism.

Casaubon was soon joined by another refugee
* Vide State of Religion^ p. 227.

IV THE ROMAN CONTROVERSY 125

whose character and fortunes attracted much
notice from his contemporaries. Marcus An-
tonius de Dominis was in the early stage of middle
age when he sought the protection of the English
Court, and had been for fourteen years Archbishop
of Spalato. Well endowed by nature with intel-
lectual powers, he had been trained by the
Jesuits, and was known to be a man of eminent
learning. Had his character been worthy of his
intellect he would have counted among the most
illustrious men of his time, but his ambition,
venality, and falseness alienated everybody, and
his miserable death in the dungeon of the In-
quisition at Rome could not outbalance the con-
tempt which he had evoked. " Conscience in
show and covetousness in deed caused his coming
hither," says Fuller severely. There was a mixture
of motives. The scruples of a genuine scholar,
the vanity of a popular preacher, and the perilous
courage of a born controversialist united in De
Dominis with the anti- papal prejudice of a Vene-
tian subject and the personal resentment of an
injured man. At Venice he happened to fall
in with two eminent Englishmen, Sir Henry
Wotton and his chaplain William Bedell, who
appear to have turned his thoughts to England,
where the reigning Sovereign was keenly interested
in the standing controversy with Rome. He was
warmly welcomed, for the defection of an Arch-

126 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iv

bishop was felt to be no common incident.
James I. was immensely pleased and flattered.
Presents and preferments flowed in. The stranger
was made Dean of Windsor and Master of the
Savoy; he made himself, by a piece of sharp
practice which caused unpleasant observation.
Vicar of West Ilsley. His popularity ebbed as
quickly as it had risen, for he disclosed a griping
avarice which disgusted everybody, and an arro-
gance which was curiously offensive in a refugee.
Still, his controversial services were very consider-
able. In 1617 he published the first part of
his great polemical work, De Republtca Eccle-
siastical and two years later he followed it up
with an edition of Father Paul's famous History
of the Council of Trent.

" Indeed," writes Fuller, " he had a controversial
head with a strong and clear style, nor doth an hair hang
at the nib of his pen to blurr his writings with obscurity :
but first understanding himself, he could make others
understand him. His writings are of great use for the
Protestant cause."*

Cosin, in his Historia Transubstantiationis Pa-
palis^ written in France about 1656, but not
published until 1675, writes of De Dominis with
marked respect and describes his misfortunes with
sympathy. He says that he had deserved well
of the Church of God, and was deservedly num-
bered among the writers of the English Church.

* Vide Church History, vol. v., p. 510 (Oxford, 1845).

IV THE ROMAN CONTROVERSY 127

Until the Revolution had definitely tied the
Monarchy to the Protestant interest, the foreign
policy of the Sovereign was the point of danger
for English Protestantism. Religion was still
regarded as mainly an affair for governments, and
these were monarchical. James I. hankered after
the exalted monarchism of the Continent, and his
controversial interests disgusted him with the
unscholarly polemics of the Puritans. He was
bent on marrying his heir to a Roman Catholic
princess, and was carried by his object into nego-
tiations which affected the religious policy of
the country. When the Spanish project failed,
he turned to France. Henrietta Maria came
to England with the hope and expectation of
being able to wield a considerable influence in
favour of her co-religionists. The conversion of
monarchs and the subtle de- Protestantizing of
churches were regular methods of the Jesuit
crusade against the Reformation. In Poland,
and later in Sweden, those methods were remark-
ably successful. There was fair cause for thinking
that in England no less success might be antici-
pated. On the English side there was a natural
desire to present the Church of England in the
most favourable aspect to the foreign diplo-
matists. Points of agreement were magnified:
points of difference were ignored, obscured, or
explained away. This natural tendency coincided
with the rapidly worsening relations between the

128 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iv

Anglicans and their Puritan neighbours within
England itself. As Arminians, patristic students,
anti- Sabbatarians, and sacerdotalists, the Laudians
found themselves increasingly attracted to the
Roman Catholics, who became more numerous
and important in the Court of Henrietta Maria.
They were anxious to make quite clear to the
foreigners how distinctive was the Anglican system
and how deeply they disapproved of the crude
nudities of Protestantism. Yet there was no
serious intention of abandoning the general
platform of the Reformation save among a small
section of fashionable folk, lay and clerical, who
found the smile of the Court more persuasive
than any formal arguments. Racket, in his well-
known life of Williams, the most versatile and
enigmatic figure among the leading Anglican
Churchmen of the time, gives a curious account
of the pains which he took to impress the French
favourably with the Anglican system. Williams,
who combined the positions of Lord Keeper,
Bishop of Lincoln, and Dean of Westminster,
had entertained the French Mission, which had
come to England to conclude the marriage nego-
tiations, with anthems in Westminster Abbey.
One of the company, a French Abbe, desired
further information about the Church of England,
and was invited to witness the service on Christmas
Day. He was placed in the muniment -room.

IV THE ROMAN CONTROVERSY 129

where he could see everything without attracting
notice, furnished with a copy of the Prayer- Book
in French, and with an attendant to explain the
service. Afterwards he was entertained at dinner
in the College Hall, and, when the feast was over,
he retired with the Dean into a gallery, and spoke
freely on his impressions. He spoke with disgust
of the falsehoods about English Christianity cir-
culated on the Continent by the English Papists,
and acknowledged frankly the reverence and dig-
nity of the Holy Communion service which he
had witnessed. " Though I deplore your schism
from the Catholic Church," he said, " yet I should
bear false witness if I did not confess that your
decency, which I discerned at that holy duty, was
very allowable in the consecrator and receivers."
Williams expressed the hope that " he would think
better of the religion for the future." " The
better of the religion," echoed the Frenchman,
supposing that the words related to the Reformed
Church in France, " I will lose my head if you
and our Huguenots are of one religion." " I
protest, sir," was the reply, " you divide us
without cause."* Both the Frenchman's impres-
sion and the Bishop's disclaimer are extremely
significant. The Church of England was drawing
away from the other Reformed Churches, but it
still retained a horror of the Papacy, which
* Vide Racket, Life of Williams, p. 210/. (1693).

9

130 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iv

made the notion of essential difference from them
repulsive. The '' highest " Anglican would have
been shocked and scandalized if the ^^ Protestant "
character of the Church of England had been
questioned.

Reviewing the relations of England and Rome
since the Reformation, we may perhaps use-
fully divide the history into four periods, sever-
ally distinguished as the periods of the struggle
for independence, the Protestantizing of the
Monarchy, the Protestant supremacy, and in-
dividual proselytizing. These descriptions are
obviously not exclusive, but they serve roughly
to indicate the prevailing character of the different
times.

I. On February nth, 1531, the Convocation
of Canterbury acknowledged the Royal Supre-
macy in a formula which Archbishop Warham
proposed : '' We acknowledge His Majesty to be
the singular Protector, only and supreme Lord,
and, so far as the law of Christ allows, supreme
Head of the English Church and clergy." In
February, 1570, Pope Pius V. condemned and
excommunicated Elizabeth. After enumerating
the Queen's offences, the Pontiff proceeds :

"We therefore give sentence, we declare and decree
that this alleged Queen of England has incurred the
anathema of the greater excommunication, and the other
pains and penalties of those who dare such deeds; we

IV THE ROMAN CONTROVERSY 131

disable and deprive her of her kingdom. We excom-
municate, anathematize, deprive, and disable her: we
summon all faithful Christians and issue letters accord-
ingly: we absolve her people from their allegiance; as
for her oath and her books, we extinguish them, and order
every edition of them to be burned."

The Bull of deposition, Regnans in excelsis^
followed immediately. It was the formal de-
claration of war between the Pope and the English
nation in its civil and in its ecclesiastical aspect.
Between 1532 and 1570 there was always a
possibility that the breach created by Henry's
quarrel would be healed, and the Papal Supre-
macy be restored over the island Church. With
the Queen's excommunication this possibility
vanished. If England was again to be restored
to the Roman obedience, it would be effected
by a crusade from without, or by treason from
within, not by an agreement frankly negotiated
with the national authorities and expressing the
national will. Roman Catholics were stamped
with the character of bad citizens, and entered
on their long tribulation with their religious
witness hopelessly entangled by political aspira-
tions inconsistent with loyalty.

II. For a whole generation England was
governed by an excommunicated Sovereign, whose
life from day to day was threatened by the mur-
derous fanaticks of the Counter-Reformation.
Elizabeth became the head of the Protestant

132 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iv

interest in Europe, and the Church of which she
was " Supreme Governor " regarded itself, and
was everywhere regarded, as the leading repre-
sentative of Reformed Christianity. With the
death of the great Queen, and the accession of the
King of Scotland, the situation was changed.
There was no longer any personal grievance
obtruding itself between the Sovereign and the
Papacy. The son of Mary, Queen of Scots,
whom all the Catholic world regarded as a martyr,
might well be thought to regard the Roman
Church with a measure of sympathy, and James
was peculiarly open to the personal appeals which
the Roman emissaries knew so well how to frame.
His dislike of the Puritans, his fondness for
controversy, and his amiable ambition to play the
peacemaker, inclined him to indulge the notion
of a reconciliation with the Papacy; and though
the Protestant feeling of the nation, raised to
fever-heat by the Gunpowder Plot, made open
negotiations wholly impossible, yet it is certain
that he carried himself in such-wise that high
expectations were raised in Rome. The Jesuits
were busy in his Court. His Queen, Anne of
Denmark, was strongly attracted to the Roman
Church, and encouraged the hope that she would
profess herself openly a Roman Catholic. On her
deathbed she declared in response to an appeal
from Archbishop Abbot that she " renounced

IV THE ROMAN CONTROVERSY 133

her own merits, and relied only upon her Saviour,"
and this somewhat vague declaration has been
understood to mean that she was not actually
a Roman Catholic, but she had steadily refused
for years to receive the Sacrament from a Protes-
tant minister, and had privately attended Mass
and made her confession to the priests. Charles I.
was a more sincere Anglican than his father,
though a less learned theologian, but his Angli-
canism was of the type then coming into promi-
nence under the ardent patronage of Archbishop
Laud, which had least sympathy with the Re-
formation, was associated in the popular mind
with the absolutist tendencies of the royal policy,
and was hardly intelligible to the religious public.
Henrietta Maria was in every respect a more
energetic and influential person than Anne of
Denmark, and she came to England with the
importance which belonged to the representative
of a great Roman Catholic monarchy. The
English Court became not only aggressively anti-
Puritan, but also the centre of an active Roman
propagandism. " The natural desire of the
Catholics to spread their religious belief found
support in the Queen. Her chapel in Somerset
House was open to all who chose to visit it, and
though restrictions were occasionally placed by
the Government upon the access of visitors, she
had always sufficient influence over her husband

134 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iv

to obtain their removal. The Capuchins who
officiated in the chapel were unwearied in visiting
the sick, and in carrying the consolations of their
religion to those who accepted their ministrations,
and their zeal was often rewarded by conversions
from Protestantism." In their ardour to gain
converts the Roman emissaries were not over-
scrupulous. It is clear, says Dr. Gardiner,
*' that a large proportion of the conversions made
were utterly worthless." This busy proselytizing
would have been offensive enough in any case,
but it did not stand alone. Along with it pro-
ceeded the policy of " Thorough " in Church
and State.

" The real danger arose not from the Catholic clergy,
but from the Government. Everywhere men were being
taught that it was their duty to submit to the King.
They saw practices and customs everywhere enjoined
upon them of which they had known nothing before,
and they began to suspect that some deeper motive was
in existence than reached their ears. They knew that
language which had been unheard in the reign of Eliza-
beth was freely used. The clergy talked of priests and
altars, sometimes of auricular confession and of honours
to be paid to saints. The inference — hasty it may be,
but natural enough — was that there was a deep plot to
wean the nation from its Protestantism."*

One of the Queen's chaplains, Christopher
Davenport, a Franciscan missionary better known

* Gardiner, viii. 132, 133.

fv THE ROMAN CONTROVERSY 135

as Franciscus de Sancta Clara, was not content
with the conversion of individuals but aspired to
a reconciliation of the Churches. He was a man
of learning, and acquired a considerable influence
among the leading English ecclesiastics. Bishop
Montague, the author of the Apfello Caesarem^
was among his acquaintances, and he was on
intimate terms with the eccentric Goodman,
Bishop of Gloucester, who declared in his will
that " no other Church hath salvation in it, but
only so far as it concurs with the faith of the
Church of Rome." Archbishop Laud himself
aroused suspicion by his intercourse with Daven-
port, whom he was alleged to have protected
and pensioned. In 1634 the Friar published an
exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles, which
anticipated Tract XC. by attempting to prove
that they are not essentially antagonistic to the
Roman doctrine. This book was dedicated to
Charles L, and, if not formally licensed in Eng-
land, was freely circulated there, probably with
the knowledge and approval of the Archbishop.
" When the book was printed," writes Prynne,
" this author presented not only the King, but
the Archbishop himself with one of them, bound
up in vellum, with the King's Arms on the cover,
and blue silk strings." This volume was pro-
duced in evidence against the Archbishop at his
trial. Tyranny in the State, sacerdotalism in

136 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iv

the Church, and both conspicuous at a juncture
when the cause of Protestantism in Europe was
in mortal danger of final overthrow, created the
deepest anxiety in patriotic and religious English-
men. It was widely felt that the enormous
powers of the Royal Supremacy, by which the
original breach with Rome had been effected,
and the Reformation of Religion carried through,
could not be safely vested in monarchs who
might themselves be disloyal to the Protestant
cause. The Church of England needed to be
protected against its '' Supreme Governor."
No Act of the Long Parliament was more popular
than that which abolished the Court of High
Commission (1641). The tragic fate of Charles I.
and Archbishop Laud, and the troubled period
which followed, provoked a reaction which
restored both Monarchy and Episcopacy, and
seemed to bind Church and King together in an
indissoluble alliance. But again the " Supreme
Governor " failed the Church of England. The
sons of the Royal Martyr did not share his devoted
Anglicanism. A situation of the utmost peril, alike
for the national liberties and for the Protestant
faith, was disclosed when Charles II. was known
to be in the pay of Louis XIV., and his brother,
the heir to the throne, was seen to be a bigoted
Papist. All the rage and terror of panic-stricken
English Protestantism poured itself out in the
miserable violence of the Popish Plot. So long

IV THE ROMAN CONTROVERSY 137

as Charles 11. lived the crisis was postponed, but
with the accession of his brother it developed
rapidly. In face of James II. 's deliberate and
sustained attempt to use the immense preroga-
tives of the Divine-right Monarchy in the interest
of the Roman Church, religious Englishmen
were carried into a striking contradiction of
passionately held convictions. They were con-
fronted by an evil choice. They had either to
sacrifice their consistency or to jeopardize their
religion, and naturally they preferred humiliation
to apostasy. The Revolution was the formal
negation of that perfervid loyalty which (to use
the language of the Syllabus Errorum drawn
up by the University of Oxford in 1683) was
" the badge and character of the Church of
England," and to act on the very principles
which had been so solemnly pronounced " here-
tical and blasphemous, infamous to the Christian
religion, and destructive of all government in
Church and State." The Revolution, moreover,
reaffirmed the essential Protestantism of the Eng-
lish Church. In face of aggressive Catholicism
the alienating sophistries of controversy seemed
to vanish, and the essential unity of Protestant
religion became again apparent. The old fra-
ternal language was once more heard on the lips
of English Bishops. Archbishop Sancroft in 1688
issued to the Bishops of his Province an earnest
admonition to bid their clergy " have a very tender

138 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iv

regard to our brethren, the Protestant Dissenters,"
and that they should " warmly and most affec-
tionately exhort them to join with us in daily fer-
vent prayer to the God of peace for an universal
blessed union of all Reformed Churches both at
home and abroad against our common enemies, and
that all they who do confess the holy Name of our
dear Lord, and do agree in the truth of His holy
Word, may also meet in one holy Communion,
and live in perfect unity and Godly love."*
The mere fact that the leader of European Pro-
testantism now became the " Supreme Governor "
of the Church of England reduced to absurdity
the notion that the Church of England was other
than, in the full sense of the word, a Protestant
Church. For the second time the cause of English
liberty and that of English Protestantism were
seen to be identical, and in both cases the exer-
cise of the Royal Supremacy had been the
principal point of danger. The earlier episode
had led to the crisis of the Great Rebellion and
the violent destruction of the established system;
the later led to the crisis of the Revolution and
the definite Protestantizing of the Monarchy.
There must be no recurrence of the perilous
phenomenon of a Papist " Supreme Governor "
of the Church of England. The language of the
Bill of Rights (1688) is explicit and decisive:
* Vide Wilkins, Concilia, vol. iv., p. 618.

IV THE ROMAN CONTROVERSY 139

" And whereas it hath been found by experience that
it is inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this
Protestant kingdom, to be governed by a popish prince,
or by any king or queen marrying a papist, the said
Lords spiritual and temporal, and Commons, do further
pray that it may be enacted, that all and every person
and persons that is, are, or shall be reconciled to, or shall
hold communion with, the see or Church of Rome, or
shall profess the popish religion, or shall marry a papist,
shall be excluded, and be for ever incapable to inherit,
possess, or enjoy the crown and government of this realm,
and Ireland, and the dominions thereunto belonging, or
any part of the same, or to have, use, or exercise any
regal power, authority, or jurisdiction within the same;
and in all and every such case or cases the people of these
realms shall be, and are hereby absolved of their allegiance;
and the said crown and government shall from time to
time descend to, and be enjoyed by such person or persons
being Protestants as should have inherited and enjoyed
the same in case the said person or persons so reconciled,
holding communion, or professing, or marrying as afore-
said, were naturally dead."

The Coronation Oath was now enlarged to its
present form by the addition of a definite pledge
to " maintain," not only " the laws of God "
and " the true profession of the Gospel," but also
" the Protestant Reformed Religion established
by law."

III. The Toleration Act (1689), which re-
warded the Nonconformists for their patriotic
attitude during the Revolution, was carefully

140 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iv

framed to exclude Roman Catholics from relief.
Its professed object was to provide " some ease
to scrupulous consciences in the exercise of
religion " as " an effectual means to unite Their
Majesties' Protestant subjects in interest and
aiiection." That the profession of the Roman
Catholic religion and good citizenship were in-
compatible was the assumption of English states-
men and the firmly rooted belief of most English-
men. Moral repugnance mingled with intel-
lectual contempt and political suspicion in the
English attitude towards the Roman Church.
The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685)
had renewed the association of " Popery " and
persecution. Louis XIV. played at the end of
the seventeenth century the sinister role which
Philip II. had played in the middle of the six-
teenth. In James II. 's reign England was filled
with refugees from France bringing harrowing
stories of barbarous cruelty. All the old embit-
tering memories — " Bloody Mary's " persecu-
tions, the attempts to assassinate Elizabeth,
Gunpowder Plot, the Irish Massacre, the Popish
Plot — ^were renewed, deepened, and confirmed.
Rome, it was plain enough, was, as she boasted,
semper eadem^ always the unsleeping enemy of the
truth, the cruel and crafty persecutor of Protes-
tants. The historian notes with surprise that
the Papacy, so far from urging forward the

IV THE ROMAN CONTROVERSY 141

persecuting Catholic sovereigns, was pursuing a
policy of its own in opposition to theirs. The
accession of Elizabeth and the expedition of
William of Orange were not displeasing to the
reigning Pontiff, to whose view the exorbitant
power of Spain or France was a more formidable
danger than the survival of heresy in England.
Nevertheless the public conscience refused to
distinguish between the Pope and his most con-
spicuous political representatives. Philip II.
and Louis XIV. were, more truly than the reign-
ing Pope, the symbols of the aggressive Catholi-
cism directed by the Jesuits which would give
no quarter to the Reformation. From 1688 to
1829 — that is, from the expulsion of James II.
to the Emancipation of the Catholics — the con-
stitution of England was rigidly and exclusively
Protestant. Roman Catholics, excluded from
public life and subject to many legal disabilities,
drew apart from the national life. The French
Revolution created a revulsion of popular feeling
in their favour, for the victims of the revolutionary
tyranny took refuge in England and evoked much
public sympathy. Yet the anti- Roman prejudice
was so strong that Pitt was compelled to exclude
Catholic emancipation from the Act which united
England and Ireland, and when, in 1829, the
enfranchisement was actually carried through
Parliament, the disturbance of the public mind

142 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iv

was profound. For 140 years the Church of
England was so completely isolated from the
Church of Rome that even the profound theoreti-
cal divergence found little or no expression.

IV. Catholic Emancipation (1829) was quickly
followed by the Reform Act (1832). These great
measures inaugurated a long series of legislative
changes, of which the effect was to destroy the
elaborate structure of privilege which had been
built round the ecclesiastical establishment.
The Church of England, in the judgment of
many of its devoutest members, was in imminent
danger. Their distress and alarm found notable
expression in the Oxford Movement, which re-
vived (after the lapse of 130 years) the opinions
of the Nonjurors. That movement, in the course
of less than ninety years, has broken up the reli-
gious unity of the nation, effected a transforma-
tion in English Churchmanship, and brought the
National Church to the verge of disruption. Its
founders were originally true to the anti-papal
tradition of their Church. It would be difficult
to exceed the hostility to the Papacy which per-
vades the earlier Tracts. But the logic of their
position was too strong for their inherited pre-
judices and carried them to conclusions which
they had not contemplated. They were bent
on reviving the medieval system, but of all the
medieval institutions the most august and per-

IV THE ROMAN CONTROVERSY 143

vading was the Papacy; they were enamoured of
Catholicism, but the type of religion which they
drew from the Fathers was precisely that which
the Anglican standards repudiated, and which
found its modern expression in the Roman Church.
The Church of England, as they imagined and
described it, was seen to be strangely, almost
grotesquely, unlike what in point of fact they
knew it to be. " Apostolical Succession," the
keystone of their ecclesiastical theory, was re-
garded with suspicion and dislike by the mass
of English Churchmen, and received but a cold
welcome from the English Bishops.

Thus all roads led to Rome, and the first phase
of the Oxford Movement, when it was academic,
learned, and logical, ended in the secession of
Newman (1845) and some hundreds of his fol-
lowers. One consequence of the movement was
the rekindling of the ancient controversy which
had slumbered for 150 years. The controversy
was ancient, but the circumstances in which it
had to be carried on were wholly novel. The
Papacy no longer menaced the political indepen-
dence of England, and statesmen no longer
concerned themselves with its proselytizing
eiforts. Lord Russell's Ecclesiastical Titles Act
(1851) was the last essay in anti- Roman legisla-
tion, and it could not retain its place on the
statute-book for more than a few months. The

144 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iv

vehement anti-Roman prejudice which possessed
English minds in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, and had become an uncriticized tra-
dition during the eighteenth, had waned, and
was now for the most part confined to the less
educated sections of the community. It was
possible to consider the devotions and beliefs of
the Roman Church on their merits, and when so
considered they were found by many people very
attractive. The Romantic movement which
swept over Europe in the wake of the French
Revolution had affected England also. Sir
Walter Scott's genius had thrown a glamour
over medieval life. Keble's Christian Tear had
led great numbers of English Churchmen to accept
a religious habit which was certainly not Pro-
testant. The Prayer-Book was read in the light
of its medieval sources, not any longer in that
of the ofiicial " confession." Even so, it was a
very inadequate instrument for expressing the
'' Catholic " aspirations of the Tractarians, and
they soon embarked on a bold course of illegality
which has been crowned with so large a measure
of success that, for all practical purposes, the
Act of Uniformity has been abrogated, and the
parish clergy determine for themselves the cere-
monial and even the forms of service which they
use in the churches. The decline of the middle
class, which was the stronghold of Protestant

IV THE ROMAN CONTROVERSY 145

feeling, and the rapid rise to political ascendancy
of the working classes, has facilitated this lawless
tendency.

While thus the situation within England was
changing to the great advantage of Catholicism,
the Roman Church itself was altering. The
religious reaction which followed the Revolution
created a type of Churchmanship which had little
hold of local traditions and little use for antiquity.
A nearer and a stronger authority than that of
Councils was plainly needed in a world which
had witnessed the violent overthrow of the
national churches, and was in tone and tendency
increasingly secularist. The Papacy had weathered
the storm, and emerged as the only factor in the
ecclesiastical system which was strong enough
to make head against the modern world. Ac-
cordingly, the nineteenth century witnessed the
rapid growth of ultramontane theory and cen-
tralization. The Jesuit policy of aggrandizing
the Papacy at the cost of the Episcopate, tri-
umphed at the Vatican Council (1870), and the
opposition, which at one time seemed very for-
midable, died away in nothing more serious than
the small and futile secession of the " Old Catho-
lics." At first view this dramatic victory might
well appear very astonishing. On the old lines
of controversy, accepted by both Anglicans and
Romans in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-

146 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iv

turies, the case against Rome had been greatly
strengthened, for it was easy to prove, as von
DoUinger and the minority in the Vatican Council
proved to demonstration, that the new dogma
of Papal Infallibility was in flagrant opposition to
the teachings of the Fathers and the tradition
of the undivided Church. But the old lines of
controversy were being everywhere abandoned.
Laudians, Galileans, and Tractarians were not so
much defeated as felt to be irrelevant. The
theory of development applied to ecclesiastical
history transformed the whole debate, and trans-
formed it mainly to the advantage of the Roman
Catholics. There was no value any longer in
catenae of quotations from the Fathers, for these
could disclose no more than an earlier and out-
passed phase of faith and practice. The fuller
and only obligatory version of either was that
which actually confronted the Christian in his
own time at the latest point in the continuing
process of ecclesiastical development. Not pre-
cedents in the distant past could suffice to guide
a living Church, but the Holy Ghost disclosing
His Will in and through the Divine Society.
The Protestant, shedding many prejudices, could
still justify his religious position; and the Papist,
shutting his eyes to much truth, could still make
a bold controversial stand. But the Galilean and
the Tractarian with their weight of patristic

IV THE ROMAN CONTROVERSY 147

learning, which had been the glory of their
churches in an earlier time, found themselves
helpless, unintelligible, and discarded. The con-
troversial advantage of the Roman Catholics is
not to be measured only by the number of
individual conversions, though this is considerable
and tends to increase, but also and more adequately
by the change which has taken place in the dis-
ciples of the Tractarians. There is no longer
any enthusiasm for the via media^ and the old
devotion to the Fathers has largely vanished.
The anti-Roman note which prevailed in the
Tracts is now rarely heard. The appeal to
antiquity is only utilized in controversy with
Protestants or with the less important advocates
of Rome. The Papacy is referred to no longer
as the " head and front " of the Roman offence,
but with elaborate respect. Even the Infalli-
bility dogma is not denounced, but discussed on
the assumption that it is capable of an inter-
pretation not inconsistent with Catholic truth.
An ever- increasing emphasis is laid on the inherent
patriarchal authority of the Roman Bishop, on
the Divinely constituted supremacy of S. Peter's
successor, on the necessity of such an international
organizationof the Church as the Papacy embodies.
Along with this new attitude towards Rome there
has developed an open contempt of Anglicanism,
a disposition to belittle and even ridicule the

148 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iv

standards of the English Church, and an attitude
of truculent disobedience to the established
authorities. The services in many parishes have
been closely approximated to those of the Church
of Rome, and it has become quite common to
hear the identity of Anglican and Roman belief
boldly asserted. The term " Anglo-Roman "
tends to replace the older term " Anglo-
Catholic."

In 1894 a serious attempt v^as made to obtain
from Rome a formal acknowledgment of the
validity of Anglican Orders. Lord Halifax, the
President of the English Church Union, had made
the acquaintance of a liberal-minded Roman
priest, the Abbe Portal, and had discussed with
him the possibility of effecting a reconciliation
between the Churches. The time seemed to be
propitious for an essay in ecclesiastical peace-
making, for the pontifical throne was occupied
by a scholarly Pope with a reputation for liberal
tendencies, and the Archbishop of Canterbury,
Dr. Benson, was a distinguished medievalist.
The fact that Leo XIII. had bestowed a cardinal's
hat on Dr. Newman was generally thought to
indicate a desire to break away from the bigoted
policy of his predecessor. Great efforts were
made to induce the English Primate to make
advances to the Roman Pontiff ; but Lord Halifax,
in his enthusiasm, underrated the caution of

IV THE ROMAN CONTROVERSY 149

Dr. Benson, and forgot his strong dislike of the
papal theory. The Archbishop abstained from
committing himself to negotiations which were
foredoomed to failure, and, after much busy
agitation both in Rome and in England, the whole
venture miscarried. The Archbishop wrote to
Lord Halifax (December 14th, 1894) somewhat
sharply :

" I must be pardoned for saying, what it is only the part
of friendship to say, that I am afraid that you have lived
for years so exclusively with one set of thinkers, and
entered so entirely into the usages of one class of churches,
that you have not before you the state of religious feeling
and activity in England with the completeness with which
anyone attempting to adjust the relations between
Churches ought to have the phenomena of his own side
clearly and minutely before him."*

In April, 1895, the Pope's Apostolic Letter,
Ad Anglos^ made its appearance. In this docu-
ment Leo XI 1 1, ignored the Church of England
altogether, and addressed himself to the English
nation as if it were wholly bereft of Christianity :

" That the English race was in those days wholly
devoted to this centre of Christian unity divinely con-
stituted in the Roman Bishops, and that in the course of
ages men of all ranks were bound to them by ties of
loyalty, are facts too abundantly and plainly testified by
the pages of history to admit of doubt or question. But,
in the storms which devastated Catholicity throughout

* Vide Life of Archbishop Benson^ vol. ii., p. 611,

150 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iv

Europe in the sixteenth century, England, too, received
a grievous wound; for it was first unhappily wrenched
from Communion with the Apostolic See, and then was
bereft of that holy faith in which for long centuries it had
rejoiced and found liberty, ''^

Two documents issued from the Vatican in
the course of 1895 — the Papal Encyclical, Satis
Cognituniy on the Unity of the Church (June 29th),
and the Bull A-postolicae Curae (September), de-
claring English Orders entirely null and void —
disclosed sufficiently the unyielding character of
the papal attitude. The Archbishop, addressing
his Diocesan Conference in the summer of 1895,
defined his own position towards the papal
claims with sufficient lucidity :

" The Roman Communion had once in its bosom the
whole of Western Christendom, but it proved itself
incapable of retaining those nations. And now the
representative of the Roman Communion had, in his
desire for reunion, spoken to the English people as if they
possessed no Church at all, apparently in total ignorance
of the existence of any Church with any history or claims,
and offered this reunion with a parade of methods of
worship and of rewards of worship which was totally alien
to the feelings of a nation which had become readers of
the Bible, and who could never admit that such things
had any attractions for them. They did not question the
kindness which invited their common prayers; nor the
sincerity of an appeal which was transparently sincere;
but those two qualities only made more evident the in-
adequacy of the plea for unity which it contained. Its

IV THE ROMAN CONTROVERSY 151

acceptance would mean the bidding farewell on their part
to all the Eastern Churches and to all the other reformed
Churches of the race, and the setting aside of the Truth
which had been gained by severe sacrifices, which was
deeply cherished, and which they believed to be the
necessary foundation of all unity. ... It was the duty
of the laity as well as the Clergy to preserve in purity and
loyalty the Faith and practices which characterized the
Reformation which had this peculiar mark — that nation
and family and individual all had part in it."

The papal condemnation of Anglican Orders
was not left without answer. In February, 1897,
appeared an elaborate Answer of the Archbishops
of England to the Apostolic Letter of Pope Leo XIII,
on English Ordinations addressed to the whole body
of Bishops of the Catholic Church, It was signed
by Archbishops Temple of Canterbury, and
Maclagan of York. The Lambeth Conference
met in July of the same year, and passed no reso-
lution on the Pope's Bull, but the important
Committee appointed to consider and report
upon the subject of Church Unity adopted the
words of the similar Committee of the Lambeth
Conference of 1888:

" The Committee with deep regret felt that, under
present conditions, it was useless to consider the question
of Reunion with our brethren of the Roman Church,
being painfully aware that any proposal for reunion
would be entertained by the authorities of that Church
only on conditions of a complete submission on our part

152 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iv

to those claims of absolute authority, and the acceptance
of those other errors, both in doctrine and in discipline,
against which, in faithfulness to God's Holy Word, and
to the true principles of His Church, we have been for
three centuries bound to protest."

Among those errors against which the Refor-
mation was an emphatic protest, was not the
conception of the Christian minister as " a
sacrificing priest " one of the most notorious
and baleful ? Yet the Archbishops in their
Answer appear to assume essential agreement
between the Roman and Anglican Churches
on the subject of the Christian Ministry.

That Answer is indeed a notable illustra-
tion of the effect of the Roman controversy on
the Church of England. As a controversial
rejoinder to the Pope's attack it is learned and
effective, but as a formal declaration of Anglican
doctrine it marks a startling departure from the
historic position of the Reformed Church. Would
the English Reformers, who compiled the Prayer-
Book and the Ordinal, hav^ accepted without
demur the language of this document ? Would
the assumption that at bottom the English Church
with respect to Orders stood with the Roman
rather than with the Reformed Churches have
been tolerable to Cranmer, ; Parker, Whitgift,
Cosin, and Sheldon ? They held the " Mass "
to be " idolatrous," and they understood the

IV THE ROMAN CONTROVERSY 153

" sacrificial " character of the Roman priest in
relation to the Mass. They did not deny the
ministerial character of the Presbyterian clergy,
nor refuse to receive the Holy Sacrament as
ministered by them. Even the bitter enmities
created by the Rebellion could not carry Anglicans
into a repudiation of their essential agreement
with the non-episcopal Protestants. Rome was,
in Sancroft's phrase, the " common enemy."
Protestants were " brethren."

A specially significant indication of the true
mind of Anglican Churchmen after the Restora-
tion is provided by the practice of Denis Granville
(163 7-1 703), Bishop Cosin's son-in-law, who was
Dean of Durham from 1684 to 1691, and then
fled the country in order to join James H. in
exile. He is said to have been nominated to the
Archbishopric of York by the banished monarch.
Turbulent and worldly, Granville was yet an
ardent supporter of the Restoration settlement,
and made himself conspicuous by his efforts
to secure obedience to the new Prayer-Book.
Among his papers, which have been published
by the Surtees Society, are two of singular
interest. The first is headed '' Form used by
Dean Granville when receiving private confessions,
together with the questions used in the examina-
tion of the Penitent." These questions are
stated to " contain most of the important matters

154 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iv

in relation to such Confession as may qualify him
to receive with profit and comfort the Absolution
of the Church." Here, then, if anywhere, we
may expect to find the genuine mind of the
author disclosed, for the document is strictly
private, and cannot be influenced by any con-
siderations of interest or policy:

'' Do you believe the Church of Rome, as it is now
established, an impure and corrupted Church, and their
additions to the ancient faith, which the reformed
Churches of Christ do reject, vain, idle, and supersti-
tious ?

" Ans. I do.

" Do you believe the Reformed Churches of Christen-
dom the Churches of Christ, and parts of the Holy
Catholic Church, wherein the purest doctrine is pro-
fessed, and the Sacraments of our Lord are most duly
ministered, of any other Churches in the world ?

" Ans, I do.

"And are you satisfied that the Church of England
is the most happily reformed one of all others ?

" Ans. I am so.

" Are you resolved (by the Grace of Almighty God) ever
to own the Doctrine, Discipline, Order, and even Cere-
monies of the same in all places, as far as you can without
disturbing the peace, and breaking the union betwixt
us and other Churches of Christ ?

" Ans, I am."

Granville did but echo the belief of his father-
in-law, Cosin, who may fairly be called the master

IV THE ROMAN CONTROVERSY 155

spirit in the liturgical revision of the Restoration.
Neither of these men, nor any representative
Anglican of that time, would have accorded v^ith
the tone and assumption of the Archbishops'
Answer. The scornful allusion to " the Presby-
terians and other innovators," against whom the
alterations made in the Ordinal at the Restoration
are said to have been directed, does but em-
phasize the assumption of the Answer that
Rome and England are fundamentally agreed as
to their doctrine of Orders, an assumption which
the history of the Reformed Church decisively
disallows. If " intention " can fairly be inferred
from official action, then the English Reformers
who carefully removed from the existing rites
of Ordination and Consecration all the significant
phrases and ceremonies which had implied the
medieval conceptions of priesthood and sacrifice,
could not have " intended " to perpetuate either;
and if these conceptions be indeed, as the Romans
maintain, integral to a right understanding of
the Christian ministry, then there cannot be any
such agreement between the Churches of England
and Rome on the main question as the Archbishops
in their Answer implicitly assumed, and the
substantial justice of the Pope's decision cannot
be successfully disputed, although, as the Arch-
bishops showed, his argument in some points
lay open to damaging criticism. The circum-

156 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iv

stance that many English Churchmen have aban-
doned the rehgious point of view of those who
framed the English Ordinal, and have accustomed
themselves to read into the confessional standards
of the Church of England the very beliefs which
those standards were intended to exclude, cannot
alter the facts of history or properly affect the
argument based on them. In controversy eccle-
siastical combatants seem to exchange weapons,
and, perhaps, no experience is so potent in shaking
men's hold on distinctive beliefs as that of defend-
ing them. A considering student of Anglican
history would assign an important place among
the influences which have revolutionized Angli-
canism to the long and still continuing controversy
with Rome. For that controversy has drawn
the champions of Anglicanism on to a ground
where Protestantism, with its larger issues of
faith and morality, has no place, and thereby a
direction has been given to Anglican studies and
interests which has carried English Churchmen
ever farther from the common concerns of Re-
formed Christianity. The Roman controversy
has deranged the perspectives of Anglicanism,
and magnified into primary matters of religion
those fpoints of ecclesiastical organization and
liturgical form which for the most part are
essentially indifferent. At the end of nearly four
centuries the most conspicuous spokesmen of

IV THE ROMAN CONTROVERSY 157

the Church of England are least in accord with its
mind as disclosed in standards and traditions.

Another conclusion will force itself on the
student's mind as he reflects on the conditions
which determine the influence of rival churches
on one another. Why should the Church of
Ireland, confronted by the Roman Catholic
Church, be stiffly Protestant, while the Church
of England, ever engaged in controversy with the
same Church, approximates rapidly to the Roman
type ? The answer lies in the fact that the great
principle of repugnance is fear. In Ireland the
Protestant minority has lived for centuries in
chronic fear of the Roman Catholic majority.
A similar fear reigned in the minds of English
Churchmen for many generations, and bred a
similar rigidity of Protestant religion. With the
disappearance of fear has come also a weakening
of the sentiments which it bred. Similarly in
Scotland. So long as the Presbyterian Church
perceived in Episcopacy a formidable power
which endangered its security, it held everything
distinctive of Episcopalian Christianity at arm's
length; but with the final triumph of the Kirk

I the danger grew less and finally disappeared.

^ To-day nothing is more apparent in Scotland than
the rapid approximation of Presbyterian religion
to the liturgical system of Episcopacy. The
English Nonconformists illustrate the same fact

158 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM iv

that fear is the great preservative of ecclesiastical
distinctiveness. There are, of course, other
forces — racial ascendancy, social prejudice, eco-
nomic interest — but fear is perhaps of all alienat-
ing factors the most potent and subtle.

LECTURE V

EPISCOPACY

Of all the Reformed Churches only the Church
of England and the Church of Sweden retained
the Episcopate, but while in the case of the latter
this circumstance has iiot affected its relations
with the rest of the Protestant world, in the case
of the former it has brought the island Church
in the course of time into an almost complete
isolation.

Both in Sweden and in England the Reforma-
tion was in the fullest sense a national act, effected
by the national authority, and therefore preserving
the framework of the medieval Church which
had formed so important a part of the national
system as to render organic change extremely
difficult and repugnant. In both countries the
ecclesiastical change enhanced the power of the
national Monarchy, which succeeded to much of
the authority which had belonged to the Papacy;
but whereas in Sweden the national Church
definitely adopted the Lutheran standard, and
reckoned itself among the Lutheran Churches,
in England, though there had been considerable

159

i6o LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM* v

intimacy from time to time with the 'Calvinistic
Churches of the Continent, the national Church
took its own course, and retained a complete
religious and ecclesiastical independence. Epis-
copacy became the distinctive mark of the Church
of England, and its origin, value, and spiritual
claim formed the subjects of interminable con-
troversy.

Two factors were present in England which
were without parallel in Sweden. The one was
the prominent place held by Bishops in the Marian
persecution; the other was the anti- episcopal
agitation of the Presbyterians and sectaries.
The first invested Episcopacy with a peculiar
sanctity in English minds; the last compelled
English Churchmen to state and emphasize the
case for the ancient episcopal government of the
Church as against its modern Presbyterian rival.
When the influence of the political development
is added, it is not difficult to understand why
Episcopacy in England has had a history so dif-
ferent from that of Episcopacy in Sweden.
The essential congruity of the episcopal polity
in the Church with the monarchical polity in the
State was a favourite theme of Anglican apolo-
gists from the first. Whitgift urged it against
Cartwright; James I. stated it bluntly and even
offensively to the Puritan ministers at the Hamp-
ton Court Conference. When the constitutional

V EPISCOPACY i6i

conflict passed into the " Great Rebellion,"
and, to the horror of Europe, the Heads of the
State and of the Church were brought to the
scaffold, this commonplace of the apologists
became an article of Anglican belief held with
passionate conviction. The whole attitude of
Anglicans towards non-episcopalian Protestants
was coloured and shaped by this conviction.
The circumstance that the Calvinists of Scotland,
France, and Holland had steadily sympathized
with the Puritans in England, and had been on
the friendliest terms with the Governments of
the Interregnum, pointed in the same direction.
The connection of Church and Crown was
exalted into a first principle of Anglicanism by
the preachers and writers of the Restoration
period. " King Charles the Martyr " is the
only Saint formally added to the calendar by the
Church of England. South, the most eloquent
of the later Caroline divines, did not scruple to
say that " the only thing that does now cement
and confirm the Church of England is the blood
of that blessed martyr." As late as 1710, Phipps,
one of Sacheverell's counsel, argued thus :

" All learned men that understand our constitution
have always agreed, that there is such a near relation
between the Church and Monarchy, such a dependence
of one upon the other, that where one falls, the other
cannot stand."

II

i62 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM v

The key to much that is distinctive in English
religion must be sought in the sphere of secular
politics. It would hardly be excessive to say that
this is the case with the insistence on Episcopacy
which has played so prominent a place in the
history of Anglicanism.

Just before the outbreak of the Great War the
Church of England was agitated by a controversy
which raised the old issue of Episcopacy in a new
setting. A conference of missionaries, repre-
senting diversely ordered Churches carrying on
evangelistic work in East Africa, had met at
Kikuyu, and agreed upon a modus vivendi which
did beyond all question imply that non-episcopal
ordinations and sacraments were not necessarily
invalid, and might be fitly acknowledged and used
by Anglicans in certain circumstances. This
breach with the dominant tendencies of later
Anglicanism provoked the vehement protest
of the Bishop of Zanzibar. The controversy
was transferred from Africa to England, where
it waxed hot. In the pamphlets published on the
one side or the other appeal was continually
being made to the views of the older Anglican
divines, whose authority was pleaded by all the
combatants. It occurred to the Archbishop of
Canterbury that some public advantage would
result from a more careful and candid review of
the evidence than the controversialists them-

V EPISCOPACY 163

selves would be likely to make. Accordingly
Dr. Mason, Canon of Canterbury, well known
as a learned writer on Anglican history, under-
took the task, and in the summer of 1914 published
the fruit of his labours in the volume entitled
The Church of England and Episcopacy. In a
short Preface the compiler admits frankly that his
own convictions on the subject of Episcopacy are
definite and strong, but that none the less he
has done his work fairly :

" It has been my endeavour to show both sides of the
question. I do not profess to be impartial. I am con-
vinced that to tamper with episcopacy would be to throw
away all that is most distinctive in the character and
prospects of the Church of England. But I have desired
to show fairly how matters have stood, and to bring out
not only the earnestness with which our writers have
contended for the apostolic and divine institution of
episcopacy, but also their wish to make out the best
possible case for those who had a different polity, while
aiming in the main at promoting a scriptural and spiritual
Christianity."

The claim to impartiality cannot fairly be
disputed. Dr. Mason has performed his laborious
task with candour and thoroughness. He has
brought all students of Anglicanism under a
heavy obligation by placing in their hands a well-
arranged catena of Anglican opinions on the
subject of Episcopacy from the Reformation to

i64 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM v

the present day. He has saved them an infinity
of labour, and enabled them with little exertion
to get a fair grasp of a curiously complicated
subject.

"I believe/' he says, "that the passages here given
represent accurately, and with sufficient fulness, the mind
of the English Church from age to age, as seen both in
its great scholars, its philosophical divines, its statesmen,
and also in specimens of its average pastors, preachers, and
teachers. The impression left is complex; but I think
that no one who follows the evidence can doubt that the
Church of England stands for episcopacy with a resolu-
tion peculiarly its own."

If Dr. Mason's work is defective the fault does
not lie with him. It is inherent in the method
which perforce he adopted. A catena of opinions
gathered from nearly 400 years may be representa-
tive and complete, and yet it may ignore — nay,
must ignore — much that is really indispensable
to a right understanding of the evidence it
offers. The constantly changing background of
circumstance, the sway of temporary motives,
the pressure of specific situations, the effect of
individual temperament and experience, the vary-
ing measures of knowledge, the subtle changes in
emphasis and in the meaning of words — all these
are perforce absent from the picture.

There are some broad considerations which
ahould always be kept in the student's mind, since

V EPISCOPACY 165

they determine the actual significance of in-
dividual Anglican opinions until the nineteenth
century was well advanced

I. Anglicans without exception regarded the
Reformation as a mighty spiritual movement^
bringing back to Christian knowledge the Gospel
after a long obscuration^ and setting mind and
conscience free from a heavy and degrading spiritual
bondage. They drew a sharp dividing-line be-
tween reformed and unreformed Christianity,
and held without doubt or hesitation that the
Church of England professed the former. They
gloried in the name of Protestant, and Protes-
tantism to them did not merely mean the repu-
diation of the papal claims, but the rejection of
that type of religion which they associated with
the papal dominance. No true Anglican before
the rise of the Tractarians would have objected
to describe Anglicanism as Protestant. On the
contrary, it was universally held that the Church
of England was the pre-eminent representative
and champion of " the Protestant religion," a
famous phrase which still holds its place in the
Coronation Oath of English monarchs. How-
ever sharply they might differ among themselves
in non-essentials, all Protestants, as well Epis-
copalian as Presbyterian, stood together in the
fundamentals of the Christian religion. They
had a common enemy in the Church of Rome.

i66 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM v

In 1 68 1 the University of Cambridge described
the Church of England as " the beauty and crown
of the Reformation"; and the eloquent South
allowed himself to speak of it as " the best and
surest bulwark of Protestantism," " the only
thing that makes Protestantism considerable in
Christendom." Some grave words of Bramhall
{ob. 1663) ^^7 serve to state the general view of
English Churchmen before the Tractarians taught
them another language :

" The Protestants do not attempt to make themselves
a distinct body from the rest of the Christian world,
much less do they arrogate to themselves alone the name
of the true Church, as the Romanists do; but they content
themselves to be part of the Catholic Church. That
they have any differences among them either in doctrine
or discipline, it is the fault of the Church of Rome, which
would not give way to an uniform reformation of the
Western Church; but that their controversies are neither
so many, nor of any such moment, as he imagineth, the
Harmony of Confessions, published in print, will demon-
strate to all the world."

The essential unity of all Protestants was the
assumption of Anglicans.

11. In reading the Anglican divines it must
always be remembered that they read both the
Scriptures and the Fathers in a wholly uncritical
spirit. Historical method, as it is now understood
and employed, was not yet discovered. The

V EPISCOPACY 167

criticism of texts was in its infancy. Much
passed as genuine which has since been discovered
to be false. Indeed, the large use of forged pas-
sages in the controversies of the time — a use in
which the Roman advocates gained a disreputable
prominence — was only rendered possible by the
unquestioning faith with which for the most part
the writings of ancient authors were received.
Hardly less important is the fact that the Anglican
divines were almost invariably controversialists.
They stated their case as effectively as possible,
and allowed nothing to their opponents. The
circumstances which limited the application of
sound arguments were generally ignored, and
many arguments were used which were not sound.
Pursuing their reasoning to its ultimate conclu-
sions, they were relentless. The assertion that
Episcopacy was a Divine institution could, and
did, coexist with the practical recognition of
non- episcopal Churches. The same theologian
would maintain the necessity of Bishops, and feel
himself bound in conscience to communicate
with the Churches which had none. Cosin, when
he drafted the short paper setting out in parallel
columns the behaviour respectively of the French
Protestants and the Roman Catholics towards the
Anglican exiles, was pursuing a course which less
learned and prominent Anglicans instinctively
adopted for their own guidance. The witness of

1 68 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM v

experience outweighed the logic of the contro-
versiaHsts. Universally it was felt that the
divergence which ought to determine the action
of English Churchmen was not one of eccle-
siastical order but of religious belief.

The " great divide " of Christendom was one
of faith, not of organization. Two conceptions
of Christ's religion were claiming Christian ac-
ceptance— that of the Reformers and that of the
medieval Church — and the contrast between them
was luridly emphasized by religious persecution.
No English Churchman had the smallest doubt
as to which of the two his Church expressed.
After stating, perhaps over- boldly, that " the
doctrine of the ApostoUcal Succession " has been
" the standard teaching of the English Church "
throughout its history " from Cranmer down
to Lightfoot," Dr. Mason describes a practice
which hardly accorded with that doctrine :

" The sending of commissioners to the synod of Dort
was the act of the king, not of the church ; but no record
of protest is known, though the commissioners main^
tained an independent attitude at the time, and the
Church of England accepted no responsibility afterwards
for what was done at it. The encouragement given by
high authorities to the work of John Dury among the
foreign Protestants, the correspondence of Sharp and
Wake with Jablonski and the Prussians, not to mention
more private and personal expressions of goodwill, were
signs that the Church of England, through her leading

V EPISCOPACY 169

men, felt that the cause of the foreign Protestants was in
the main her cause.

" So much was this the case that communion was freely-
practised on both sides — at least where the foreign
churches permitted it. Sara via, while still in Holland,
communicated when he could at the English service.
Wake's correspondence shows that numbers of French
Protestants did the same in Paris. Saywell shows how
foreign Protestants visiting England were admitted to
communion here. In return, Cosin says that English
churchmen were not forbidden to communicate in the
congregations of foreign Protestants in England. He
himself communicated with them abroad. But even
Usher expressed hesitation about it. Probably men like
Scudamore and Clarendon, Morley and Hickes, who
definitely refused to do so, were a minority; but . . .
the very fact that Cosin pleaded so vehemently that it was
the right thing to do while others declined, is sufficient
indication that there was no public, official, recognized
intercommunion." *

It would, perhaps, be truer to say that inter-
communion was so much taken for granted that
a '' public, official, and recognized " procedure
was superfluous. No doubt there were scruples
expressed and acted upon in the circle of Laudian
Churchmen, but Laudian Churchmen were inno-
vators on the normal practice of Anglicans.
Clarendon himself comments on the novelty of
Lord Scudamore's action, when, as English am-
bassador in Paris, he withdrew from intercourse
with the French Protestants, and " was careful
* Vide Mason, loc, cit,, p. 484.

170 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM v

to publish upon all occasions by himself and those
who had the nearest relation to him, ' that the
Church of England looked not on the Huguenocs
as a part of their communion.' "

Usher's theory of the Episcopate may have
suggested scruples, but his sense of proportion
dictated the sound rule which his conscience
endorsed, and which beyond all question governed
the practice of most Anglican Churchmen in that
age:

" The agreement or disagreement in radical and funda-
mental doctrines, not the consonancy or dissonancy in
the particular points of ecclesiastical government, is with
me and I hope with every man that mindeth peace, the
rule of adhering to or receding from the communion of
any church."

Nor must it be forgotten that episcopalian
theory was only occasionally brought to the test
of action. The controversialist, writing in his
study, could indulge in a rigorous logic, which
ignored the salient factors of the religious situa-
tion ; but the English Churchman, carried by the
harsh pressure of the persecutor away from his
native land, was in no doubt where he could seek
and find fraternal recognition. Life corrected
logic and rectified perspectives.

III. The Anglican divines believed intensely
in the ecclesiastical autonomy of the Christian
State and the civic necessity of religious unifor-

V EPISCOPACY 171

mity. The core of the Royal Supremacy was the
right of the Christian nation to determine,
within the limits of the Christian revelation,
its own ecclesiastical system. Monarchy was the
only type of civic government known to the
ancient Christian Church: it was consecrated by
the precedents of the Old Testament and the
teachings of the New; it was practically — for the
only exceptions were too petty in scale, or too
recent in date, or too dubious in quality, to affect
the general argument — the only type certified
by the experience of mankind; it was bound into
the whole process of the English Reformation
so closely as to seem essential to it. This belief
in the ecclesiastical autonomy of the Christian
nation expressed in the supremacy of the monarch,
who was held to have inherited the religious
authority of the ancient Jewish kings and the
almost unlimited ecclesiastical functions of the
Christian emperors, both disallowed the preten-
sions of the Papacy and forbade the reforming
essays of private individuals. The King, and
none but the King, was the Divinely commissioned
instrument by which a reformation of a national
Church could be rightly undertaken. The posi-
tion of the great foreign Reformers was always
embarrassing to Anglicans, who could not fit
them in to the theory which they advanced in
defence of their own system. Generally they

172 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM v

fell back on the assumption of an extraordinary
commission, similar to that of the Hebrew pro-
phets, which might justify, in the actual state of
Christendom, the anomalous proceedings of in-
dividuals. For themselves they stood stiffly on
the inherent right of the Christian people exer-
cised through the King as Christ's commissioned
representative. As a Christian man the King
was subject to the law of Christ, and this subjec-
tion undoubtedly implied limits on his reforming
action; but, if he failed to do his duty, there was
no recognized substitute who could undertake
the work. Hooker set the law above the King.
The law of the State must determine the method
by which the King should exercise his authority,
but the authority itself was inherent in his office.
Usurpation from without, and individual action
from within, the nation were alike ruled out by
the Anglican doctrine of the Royal Supremacy.
It followed that a distinction was drawn be-
tween the foreign Protestants and the domestic
Dissenters. The former were acting within their
rights; the latter were assuming rights which
they did not possess. That both agreed on their
religious policy was nothing to the point. The
Church of England was not responsible for the
action of foreigners; it was bound to secure peace
within its own borders by exacting obedience
from its own members. It was the very principle

V EPISCOPACY 173

of the English Reformation that every Christian
nation should be free to order its religious system
according to its own specific needs. This prin-
ciple is stated in the Preface, '' Of Ceremonies/'
which is placed in the forefront of the Book of
Common Prayer as explaining the method ob-
served by its compilers:

" And in these our doings we condemn no other
nations, nor prescribe anything but to our own people
only; for we think it convenient that every country
should use such ceremonies as they shall think best to
the setting forth of God's honour and glory, and to the
reducing of the people to a most perfect and godly living
without error or superstition; and that they should put
away other things, which from time to time they per-
ceive to be most abused, as in men's ordinances it often
chanceth diversely in divers countries."

It argues, therefore, no inconsistency on the
part of English Churchmen that they acknow-
ledged abroad what they suppressed at home.
Dissenters might be right or wrong, but they
were certainly revolters from the national system
of religion, and as such they merited the punish-
ment meted out to them by the laws of England.
Bishop Davenant (ob. 1641) expressed the position
with admirable clearness :

" It is lawful and useful for every particular church to
exercise that jurisdiction over their own people, which
in no case they ought or can usurp over the subjects of

174 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM v

another church. For if their own oppose the received
doctrine of their church, established by public consent,
they may (both for the errors they scatter, and for the
disturbance they cause in the church) put them aside
from the communion of their church so long till they
leave off to infect others and trouble the church with
their errors. But as soon as they repent of their errors,
they are to be received again into the bosom of their
mother. Thus may they deal with their own. But
when they are to meddle with churches not at all subor-
dinate unto them, they may hold divine concord and
keep God's peace with those which think and teach
otherwise than themselves, as we may see it in Cyprian."*

More than seventy years later, when the Tolera-
tion Act had been on the statute-bpok for nearly
twenty years, the same view was expressed by
Joseph Bingham {ob, 1723), the learned author of
The Antiquities of the Christian Churchy when he
appealed to the French Protestants, who had been
taking refuge in England in considerable numbers
since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes,
not to become Dissenters, but to conform to the
Established Church:

" For it is one grand principle in the French Church
common to her with the Church of England, that every
national church has power to appoint what indifferent
rights and ceremonies she judges proper and expedient
for her own edification : and that all the members of any
such church are bound in conscience quietly and peace-
ably to submit to those her orders; and that they who

* Vide Mason, p. iii.

V EPISCOPACY 175

raise contention about such things, and rather separate
than comply with them, are guilty of a causeless separa-
tion. It is another principle naturally flowing from the
former, that different rites in distinct national churches
make no difference in the faith, nor ought to hinder the
members of one church from joining in communion with
another; but that everyone is bound to use the rites and
ceremonies of that church with which he communicates,
though they be different from his own. A Frenchman
is bound to receive the Communion kneeling in the
English Church, and an Englishman to receive it standing
in the French Church, because these are the laws and
customs of each communion."*

It could not, of course, escape notice that
the Calvinistic Churches of the Continent were
organized against the will of the national authori-
ties. The Huguenot or the Dutch Protestant was
as clearly a rebel against the government of his
Sovereign as the English sectary. Apart from the
Scandinavian Churches, which were reformed and
organized by national authority, the Lutherans
in Germany and elsewhere lay open to the same
accusation. There can be no doubt that both
Elizabeth and her immediate successors were
acutely conscious of the paradoxical position
which they held as supporters of religious dissent
on the Continent and suppressors of dissent
within their own dominions. But the necessities
of national or dynastic policy triumphed over the

* VidQ Works, vol. ix. 299 (London, 1845).

176 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM v

logic of ecclesiastical theory. For the majority
of English Christians, indeed, the paradox had
no reality. In their view the true Churches of
France, Holland, and Germany were represented,
not by the ecclesiastical systems established by
the national authorities, but by the persecuted
minorities who, with whatever eccentricities
of organization, professed the Gospel. An ex-
ception to the general attitude towards non-epis-
copal Churches was generally made during the
seventeenth century in the case of the Presby-
terian Church of Scotland. The Scots, it was
held, could not plead that their want of Bishops
was involuntary, for they had deliberately and
violently rejected Episcopacy after it had been
restored to them by their Sovereign. Political
resentment emphasized the distinction, for the
Scots had not only led the war in the Great Re-
bellion, but had played the Judas by their Prince
when in his extreme distress he had entrusted
himself to their hands, selling him basely to his
enemies for a price in money. Their attempt to
impose the Presbyterian system on England was
bitterly resented. In 1649 — ^^^ ^^^7 Y^^^ ^^
the King's execution — Bramhall published his
Fair Warning to take heed of the Scottish Disci-
fline. He insists that his denunciations of the
Scottish Presbyterians implied no unkindness to
the Continental Churches :

V EPISCOPACY 177

" I foresee that they will suggest that through their
sides I seek to wound foreign churches. No: there is
nothing which I shall convict them of here but I hope
will be disavowed, though not by all protestant authors,
yet by all the protestant churches in the world. . . .
Before these unhappy troubles in England, all protestants,
both Lutherans and Calvinists, did give unto the English
Church the right hand of fellowship."*

If, then, these considerations be kept in mind —
the general view of the Reformation common to
all Anglicans, the uncritical method and contro-
versial purpose of Anglican writers, the diver-
gence between their theories of Episcopacy and
their behaviour to the non-episcopal Churches,
their exalted notion of the religious authority
of the Christian State — the conclusion can hardly
be avoided that, although Episcopacy was jealously
guarded as a precious part of the Anglican heritage,
it was not, until quite recent times, elevated into
the very articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesiae.

The modern phase of the history of Anglican
Episcopacy begins with the publication of the
first of the famous series of Oxford Tracts in the
year 1833. It is headed Thoughts on the Ministerial
Commission respectfully addressed to the Clergy^
and is written in a tone of apprehensive urgency.
Disestablishment and Disendowment are threat-
ened, and may be imminent. If the disaster

* Vide Mason, p. 213.

12

178 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM v

befalls the Church, what title to audience and
respect will be left to the clergy ? Will they not
sink into the depressed position and ignominious
dependence of the dissenting ministers ?

" Christ has not left His Church without claim of its
own upon the attention of men. Surely not. Hard
Master He cannot be, to bid us oppose the world, yet
give us no credentials for so doing. There are some
who rest their divine mission on their own unsupported
assertion; others, who rest it upon their popularity;
others on their success; and others, who rest it upon
their temporal distinctions. This last case has, perhaps,
been too much our own; I fear we have neglected the
real ground on which our authority is built — our Apos-
tolical descent.

" We have been born, not of blood, nor of the will of
the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. The Lord
Jesus Christ gave His Spirit to His Apostles: they in
turn laid their hands on those who should succeed
them; and these again on others; and so the sacred gift
has been handed down to our present Bishops, who have
appointed us as their assistants, and in some sense repre-
sentatives."

After quoting the language of the Ordinal, the
author proceeds to enquire what is the origin of
the Bishop's ordaining power :

" He could not give what he had never received. It is
plain then that he but transmits ; and that the Christian
Ministry is a succession. And if we trace back the power
of ordination from hand to hand, of course we shall come
to the Apostles at last. We know we do as a plain

V EPISCOPACY 179

historical fact; and therefore all we, who have been
ordained Clergy, in the very form of our ordination
acknowledged the doctrine of the Jpostolical succession,

" And for the same reason, we must necessarily con-
sider none to be really ordained who have not thus been
ordained. For if ordination is a divine ordinance, it
must be necessary, and if it is not a divine ordinance, how
dare we use it ? Therefore all who use it, all of us, must
consider it necessary. As well might we pretend the
Sacraments are not necessary to Salvation, while we make
use of the offices of the Liturgy; for when God appoints
means of grace, they are the means.

" I do not see how anyone can escape from this plain
view of the subject, except (as I have already hinted), by
declaring that words do not mean all that they say."

The Tract concludes with a fervent appeal
to the clergy boldly to profess their belief, or,
at least, to " choose their side " :

" A notion has gone abroad that they (i,e,, the people)
can take away your power. They think they have given
and can take it away. They think it lies in the Church
property, and they know that they have politically the
power to confiscate that property. They have been
deluded into a notion that present palpable usefulness,
produceable results, acceptableness to your flocks, that
these and such like are the tests of your Divine commis-
sion. Enlighten them in this manner. Exalt our holy
Fathers, the Bishops, as the Representatives of the
Apostles, and the Angels of the Churches; and magnify
your office, as being ordained by them to take part in the
Ministry.

1 80 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM v

" But, if you will not adopt my view of the subject,
which I offer to you, not doubtingly, yet (I hope) respect-
fully, at all events, choose your side. To remain neuter
much longer will be itself to take a part. Choose your
side ; since side you shortly must, with one or other party,
even though you do nothing. Fear to be of those, whose
line is decided for them by chance circumstances, and who
may perchance find themselves with the enemies of
Christ, while they think but to remove themselves from
worldly politics. Such abstinence is impossible in
troublous times. ' He that is not with me is against me^
and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad,^ "

Such language was without precedent, and the
religious attitude which it disclosed was not to
be reconciled either with the principles of the
Reformation or with the standards of the Estab-
lished Church of England. It had not been in
this way that the great Anglicans of the past
had thought of the nation, or of the ministry,
or of the Christian Church. They had seen
everything in a different perspective, and judged
everything in a larger spirit. This first Tract
struck a note which was sustained throughout
the whole of the Tracts that followed. In the
fourth of the series the argument is repeated
and developed. The telling but delusive anti-
thesis between the Establishment and the Apos-
tolical Succession was again insisted upon :

"Why should we talk so much of an establishment^
and so little of an apostolical succession F Why should we

w EPISCOPACY i8i

not seriously endeavour to impress our people with this
plain truth: that by separating themselves from our
communion, they separate themselves not only from a
decent, orderly, useful society, but from the only Church
in this realm which has a right to he quite sure that she
has the Lord^s Body to give to His people,'^

The author anticipates the objection, " sure
to be presently and confidently asked," whether
such insistence on Apostolical Succession did not
" unchurch the Presbyterians, all Christians, v^ho
have no bishops." He replies:

" To us such questions are abstract, not practical: and
whether we can answer them or no, it is our business to
keep fast hold of the Church Apostolical, whereof we are
actual members; not merely on civil or ecclesiastical
grounds, but from real personal love and reverence,
affectionate reverence to our Lord and only Saviour.
And let men seriously bear in mind, that it is one thing
to slight and disparage this holy succession where it may
be had, and another thing to acquiesce in the want of it,
where it is (if it he anywhere) really unattainable."

Dr. Mason is at some pains to maintain " that
a belief in the Divine institution of Episcopacy
v^as no invention of the Oxford Movement,"
and so much may be admitted, but it is not less
the case that the belief had long fallen out of the
scheme of Anglican religion, in which it survived
rather as an interesting archaism than as a living
conviction. The Tract writers laboured, not

1 82 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM v

unsuccessfully, to justify their doctrine by elab-
orate catenae of Anglican divines, but they could
not restore the atmosphere of the earlier time
nor bring back the circumstances which then had
excused and explained the intolerance of Chris-
tian men. Dr. Mason himself admits that there
was a difference, but he belittles its extent, and
misconceives its character. Indeed, he seems
more anxious to retort the charge of novelty on
the opponents of the Tractarians than to explain
the measure in which it can justly be advanced
against the Tractarians themselves:

" There was nothing new in the Tractarian insistence
upon the apostolical succession. What was to a certain
extent new was on the one hand the rigid aloofness with
which the Tractarians regarded the foreign churches
which were without it, and on the other hand the
passionate scorn with which the doctrine was repudiated
by partisans of the opposing school. Of these two
novelties the second, if the expression may be allowed,
was the newer."*

At least it must be admitted that the doctrine
of Apostolical Succession had never before been
thus nakedly pressed on English Churchmen.
Never before had Episcopacy been represented
as not merely in itself excellent and uniquely
authoritative because descending from the Apos-
tolic age, but also as something which severed
Anglicans from all fellowship with the Churches

* Vide Mason, p. 449.

V EPISCOPACY 183

of the Reformation, and bound them in a real, 1
though wholly inoperative and unacknowledged,
unity with the unreformed Churches of Rome i
and the East.

Newman himself was the author of no less than
twenty-nine of the ninety Tracts, and at that
stage in his career the Roman Church was hardly
less odious to him than the non-episcopal Protes-
tants. The logical impossibility of his position,
however, could not be long concealed from a mind
so acute and relentless. He has himself related
with inimitable literary skill the history of his
passage out of the Church of England into the
Church of Rome. In the process, however, he
had given utterance to ideas which have per-
sisted, and in both Churches found expression
in modes which he could not have anticipated,
and would certainly have disapproved. The
" Anglo-Catholics " of the one Church and the
" Modernists " of the other may trace their
lineage to him. The doctrine of Apostolical
Succession, which in its crudest form he had
announced to a startled Church, still holds its
place in popular manuals and in the teaching of
theological colleges. It has coloured the sermons
of many parish clergy, and has embittered the re-
lations of Anglicans and Nonconformists through-
out the country. But it could not be unaifected
by the general acceptance of the theory of develop-

1 84 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM v

ment which Newman himself had advanced in
the interest of the Papacy, but which lent itself
to other and larger applications. The advance
of critical and historical science has destroyed
the presuppositions of the traditional belief.
Who could now treat seriously the claim (which
figures so prominently in the pages of the older
champions of Anglicanism) that the Bishops
and priests represent severally the Apostles and
the Seventy, perpetuating in the Church an
" imparity of ministers " ordained by Christ
Himself ? The origins of Episcopacy began to be
investigated in a new spirit. Not some polemical
interest governed the student's mind, but a
candid desire to discover the truth. The discus-
sion was no longer limited to a few passages from
the New Testament and the patristic literature
of the undivided Church of antiquity. It drew
into its range a mass of new knowledge, and em-
ployed on its waxing materials the new " weapons
of precision " which the scholars of Europe had
gradually acquired and perfected. The pro-
tracted and embittered discussions which pre-
ceded, accompanied, and followed the Vatican
Council forced the Christian ministry under
review, and stimulated enquiry into its begin-
nings, its character, and its development.

In 1868 Dr. Lightfoot, afterwards Bishop of
Durham, published an edition of S. Paul's Epistle

V EPISCOPACY 185

to the Philippians, and appended to it a Disserta-
tion on " The Christian Ministry." This learned
and lucid essay marks a stage in the history of
Anglican belief about Episcopacy. Written in a
tone of reverent caution, and disclosing that com-
pleteness znd finish which marked all Dr. Light-
foot's work, the conclusions at which the learned
author arrived were definitely unfavourable to the
traditional view. In spite of the large, perhaps
too large, estimate of the claim which Episcopacy
can advance to the acceptance of modern Chris-
tians, the essay abandons the old claims of Divine
institution and Apostolical appointment, and
presents the Episcopate as the result of a process
of development. " The Episcopate was created
out of the Presbytery," and " this creation was
not so much an isolated act as a progressive
development, not advancing everywhere at a
uniform rate, but exhibiting at one and the same
time different stages of growth in different
churches." While thus " the Episcopate was
formed, not out of the apostolic order by localiza-
tion but out of the presbyteral by elevation,"
the conception of the ministry was shaped by
influences which were not properly Christian.
" By the union of Gentile sentiment with the
ordinances of the Old Dispensation, the doctrine
of an exclusive priesthood found its way into the
Church of Christ." In this theoretical develop-

1 86 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM v

ment Bishop Lightfoot gave decisive importance
to the influence of Cyprian :

" It is not only that he uses the terms sacerdos^ sacer-
dotium, sacerdotalis, of the ministry with a frequency
hitherto without parallel. But he treats all the passages
in the Old Testament which refer to the privileges, the
sanctions, the duties, and the responsibilities of the
Aaronic priesthood, as applying to the officers of the
Christian Church. ... As Cyprian crowned the edifice
of episcopal power, so also was he the first to put forward
without relief or disguise these sacerdotal assumptions;
and so uncompromising was the tone in which he
asserted them, that nothing was left to his successors but
to enforce his principles and reiterate his language,"*

It is not unworthy of notice that Cyprian was
a favourite authority with Anglican controversial-
ists. His exalted Episcopalianism was invaluable
against the Presbyterians, while his vehement
language against the Pope's assumptions made
him no less serviceable against the Papists. His
comparatively early date added weight to his
testimony. Thus the name of Cyprian appears
so frequently in the pages of the Anglican writers
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that
he may not unsuitably be entitled the " Anglican
Father." Lightfoot's Dissertation caused alarm
and even consternation in some Anglican circles.
He seemed, says Dr. Mason, to "give away the
case for Episcopacy" as it had been maintained

* Vide Dissertation, p. 258, in Philtppians, 1879.

V EPISCOPACY 187

by the Anglican champions of the past. Light-
foot, while asserting that he had been largely
misunderstood, declined to withdraw, or alter,
his Dissertation. In the Preface to the sixth
edition of his Commentary^ published in 1 881, he
wrote :

"While disclaiming any change in my opinions, I
desire equally to disclaim the representations of those
opinions which have been put forward in some quarters.
The object of the essay was an investigation into the
origin of the Christian ministry. The result has been a
confirmation of the statement in the English ordinal,
* It is evident unto all men diligently reading the holy
scripture and ancient authors that from the apostles'
time there have been these orders of ministers in Christ's
church — bishops, priests, and deacons.' But I was scrupu-
lously anxious not to overstate the evidence in any case;
and it would seem that partial and qualifying statements,
prompted by this anxiety, have assumed undue propor-
tions in the minds of some readers, who have emphasized
them to the neglect of the general drift of the essay."

That " general drift," however, was really
unmistakable, and both sides in the episcopalian
controversy perceived it alike, the one with satis-
faction, the other with discontent and dismay.
In 1889 Dr. Gore, at that time the leader of
the younger school of High Churchmen, published
his The Ministry of the Christian Churchy which
was a learned and ingenious attempt to reaffirm
the positions which Dr. Lightfoot had demolished.

i88 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM v

To this volume the author appended a long note
on the latter's famous Dissertation.

In 1 90 1 appeared Bishop John Wordsworth's
The Ministry of Grace ^ a book full of curious
learning, which drew a distinction, now generally
abandoned by scholars, between " charismatic "
and other ministries in the earliest Church. In
the main Lightfoot's view of the origin of the
Episcopate was reaffirmed. The gist of the
argument is thus stated in the Preface:

" As regards tho Ministry, as we know it in practice,
the conclusions reached are rather tentative than absolute.
They point to a primitive origin for the regular ministry
of the word and sacraments, but to an uneven rate of
development in its component orders, and to a longer
duration of the charismatic ministry in some regions than
in others, as well as to the persistence of the latter as a
* reserve fori:e ' latent in the Episcopate. As regards
the Episcopate the facts here stated indicate a general
tendency to a monarchical regimen, while they show that
it was not everywhere set up in exactly the same form
or at the same date. The practical conclusions must
surely be: (i) that while some form of regular ministry
is always necessary, it need not exclude a charismatic
ministry; and (2) that while Episcopacy must be a marked
feature of the Church of the future, it need not every-
where have exactly the same relation to the Presby-
terate."

Interest in the Christian ministry was stimu-
lated by the movement towards " Reunion,"

V EPISCOPACY 189

which, as the nineteenth century drew to its
close, gathered volume in every direction. In
1888 the Lambeth Conference had put forth
four propositions as together supplying '' a basis
on which approach may be by God's blessing
made towards Home Reunion." The fourth of
these ran thus :

" The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the
methods of its administration to the varying needs of the
nations and peoples called of God into the Unity of His
Church."

So soon, however, as attempts were made to
negotiate with the representatives of non-episco-
pal Churches on the basis of the Lambeth propo-
sitions— which soon came to be known as the
" Quadrilateral " — it was found that the claim
of the " Historic Episcopate " to universal accep-
tance became an insurmountable stumbling-block.
In spite of the care with which that claim had
been phrased, it was generally interpreted as
implying the " invalidity " of non-episcopal
ordinations, and of the sacraments celebrated by
ministers who had not been episcopally ordained.
The deadlock that resulted was lamented and
resented by all who realized the imperative neces-
sity of uniting the Churches, and a demand for
fresh and more searching investigation into the
origin and significance of Episcopacy became
audible in many quarters. This demand was

190 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM v

publicly expressed in a sermon preached before
the University of Cambridge on January 30th,
1 910, by Dr. J. M. Wilson, Canon of Worcester.
He appealed for a fresh examination of the
questions which " gather round the origin and
early development of Episcopacy, and the nature
and degree of the sanction which it possesses. '^
In response to this appeal the Archbishop of
Canterbury " expressed the opinion that it would
be opportune to collect and state in as precise a
form as possible the latest results of scholarly re-
search bearing on the subject." Dr. Swete, the
Regius Professor of Divinity in the University
of Cambridge, undertook the work. He has
stated his method in the Preface to the volume
in which the results of his effort were disclosed :

" Such a desire, coming from the Archbishop, had the
force of a command. It could best be fulfilled, as I
thought, in a series of Essays written by representative
scholars, whose names would be a guarantee for breadth
of knowledge and accuracy in detail; and an effort was
made — successfully, so I rejoice to say — to secure the
services of well-known theologians from each of our older
Universities."

The volume thus designed appeared in 191 8
under the title. Essays on the Early History
of the Church and the Ministry by various
Writers^ edited by H. B. Szaete, D.D. On the
title-page it bore the significant words of S. Angus-

V EPISCOPACY 191

tine : " In necessariis unitas ; in non necessariis
libertas; in utrisque caritas." Of the six essays,
the longest, most elaborate, and most important
was that on " Apostolic Succession " by Cuthbert
Hamilton Turner, well known as a learned student
of Christian history. The subject of his enquiry
is thus stated :

" It is the business of the present enquiry to examine
the origin and purpose of this emphasis on Apostolic
Succession, to fix its exact meaning in the minds of those
who first phrased it, and to trace the modifications which
the idea underwent during the patristic period — that is,
in particular between S. Irenaeus and S. Augustine.
When people talk nowadays of Apostolic Succession, it
may almost be taken for granted that they mean (whether
they are aware of it or not) the doctrine of the Succession
in the form in which it is deduced from the great con-
ception of the Christian Ministry and the Christian Sacra-
ments, their ' validity ' and their ' regularity ' which was
first worked out in S. Augustine's contributions to the
Donatist controversy. But behind the coherent and
systematic theory which we may for convenience call
* Augustinian,' the doctrine of the Succession had had
a history of two centuries; and more and the develop-
ment of ideas which, during the third and fourth cen-
turies, altered the attitude of Western theologians toward
the mutual relations of the Church and the Sacraments,
could not fail to bring with it in the end some correspond-
ing change in the meaning attached to Apostolic Succes-
sion as a necessary qualification of the Christian Ministry.
Our primary concern here is with the doctrine not in its

192 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM v

ultimate but in its earliest stage, as it was first formu-
lated and asserted in the course of the controversy with
Gnosticism." *

Dr. Lightfoot had shown that the traditional
view of Episcopacy as an Apostolical institution
must be revised in deference to the fact that
it had been developed from the Presbyterate.
Dr. Turner showed that the traditional view
of Apostolic Succession was not primitive, but
grew out of controversy in the fourth century.
In neither case did the new theory necessarily
prohibit the traditional view, but in both the
traditional view was mitigated and stripped
of its binding authority over religious minds.
It became a " pious opinion," not a dogma.
Dr. Gore has published a new edition of his
Church and the Ministry^ carefully revised by
Dr. Turner (who himself adheres to the view
which as an historian he has analyzed with such
effect), but the argument does not appear to
command acceptance outside the party which
subordinates historical judgments to dogmatic
requirements. The latest Anglican book on
the subject — The Doctrine of the Church and
Christian Reunion^ being the Bampton Lectures
for the year 1920, by the Rev. Arthur C. Headlam^
D.D,, Regius Professor of Divinity in the University
of Oxford — reaffirms the positions of Dr. Light-
foot and Dr. Turner with learning, decision, and
* Vide Essays^ ?• 95*

V EPISCOPACY 193

lucidity. After reviewing the evidence, the
Professor reaches the conclusion that Episcopacy
is an ecclesiastical creation neither ordained by
Christ nor appointed by His Apostles :

" Episcopacy, like all other Church customs, had its
roots in Apostolic times ; but Episcopacy, as it existed in
later days, was not the direct result of Apostolic action,
but was the creation of the Church, which gradually
moulded its institutions to fit the altered needs of the
times."*

" It [Episcopacy] had its origin in the Apostolic Church ;
it represents a continuous development from Apostolic
times ; but we cannot claim that it has Apostolic authority
behind it. We must recognize that we cannot claim
such authority for any Christian institution or teaching
unless there is the clear and certain evidence of docu-
ments coming from the time of the Apostles, and we
cannot believe that our Lord could have intended that
any institution should be looked upon as essential to the
existence of the Church without giving explicit and
certain directions. He instituted the Eucharist and gave
a command about Baptism, but He did not directly
institute or command Episcopacy. We cannot claim
that it is essential to the Church. Equally it is clear
that there is no Apostolic ordinance to be quoted in its
support. There is no adequate or sufficient evidence that
it was instituted by Apostles. We must recognize that
the authority that can be claimed for it is so far limited.

" But having said that, we can justly and rightly
maintain that it comes to us with the authority of the
Church of the earliest and all subsequent centuries; that

* P. 99.

13

194 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM v

it is the direct and natural development of Apostolic
institutions and the principles laid down hy our Lord;
that the Church, as a living organism, built up for itself
a strong and effective instrument hy which it might
fulfil its mission, and maintain and pass on to future
generations the divine word and life with which it had
been entrusted."*

" The Apostles as the first rulers of the Church
gradually built up a ministry adapted to the conditions
of the times, but they gave no, directions that have been
preserved for us in any trustworthy or authoritative
manner as to what should be the form of the society, and,
as a matter of fact, after they passed away we find the
Church ruled over by officers different from those that
had existed in the Apostolic Church as it is presented to
us, although doubtless linked to it by a close organic
connection.

" Now, the only deduction we can make from this is
that while it was clearly intended that the Church should
possess a properly organized ministry, it was not intended
that any particular form should be essential. The Church
should freely create its own ministry, and might pre-
sumably also change at some future time what it had
itself created, or adapt it to new conditions. We cannot
therefore say that any form is essential to entitle it to be
called a church, nor are we entitled to say that any
particular Christian society has no claim to be considered
a part of the Church because it has not a particular form
of ministry."!

Dr. Headlam personally refrains from the
inference that might seem to follow naturally
* P. 105. t P- H2-

V EPISCOPACY 19s

from such a view of Episcopacy. He allows
" that the Anglican Church has exaggerated
Episcopacy," but holds that, when the exaggera-
tions have been pruned away, the institution
itself remains the indispensable form of the
Christian Ministry in a united Church. This
also would seem to be the opinion of the Lambeth
Conference as expressed in the Apfeal to all
Christian People, which forms the most notable
feature of its recent proceedings.

The actual position of the English Bishop
hardly reflects the theory of Episcopacy which
Anglicans have generally asserted. It does not
correspond with the primitive, still less with the
Apostolic model, save in the point of superiority
in the hierarchy and in ordination. The reason
is sufficiently obvious. The English Bishop suc-
ceeded to, and to some extent has perpetuated,
the position of the medieval prelate. The vast
extent of the English diocese, which seemed to
the religious Puritan destructive of the whole
idea of responsible pastoral ministry, and the
intimate association of the English Bishop with
secular affairs, which presents him in so many
incongruous, and even invidious, situations, were
distinctive features of English Episcopacy as it
existed on the eve of the Reformation, and were
taken over as a matter of course by the Reformed
Church. Its intimate association with politics

196 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM v

has often been a snare to the English Episcopate.
Episcopal appointments have been regarded as a
means of strengthening a feeble monarchy, or,
still worse, as opportunities for purchasing support
for a government. The party system told v^ith
disastrous effect on the w^orking of the Royal
Supremacy. Since the definite triumph of
democracy there has been a cessation of the
scandals which once disgraced the administration
of the Crown patronage, but the memory of
former evils lingers, and sustains in the popular
mind a feeling of resentful suspicion, which
undoubtedly tends to weaken the rightful
influence of the Episcopal Bench.

Within the Anglican Communion at the present
time three views of Episcopacy are maintained
and advocated. First, there are those who,
ignoring or explaining away the facts of early
Christianity as now certified by historical science,
still maintain the Divine institution and Apos-
tolical appointment of t e Episcopate, and hold
the doctrine of Apostolical Succession in its most
rigorous and exclusive form. These are, though
numerously represented in the ranks of the parish
clergy, declining in number and importance.
Next, there is the great multitude, including
probably the majority of the Bishops, which
maintains, with the Preface to the Ordinal, that
Episcopacy has continued in the Church since the

V EPISCOPACY 197

time of the Apostles, that it probably originated
in Apostolic appointment, that it carries the
prestige and authority of universal acceptance in
the undivided Church of the early centuries, and
that, although not an essential of the Christian
religion, it certainly belongs to the bene esse of
the visible Church.

Lastly, there is an increasing number of Angli-
cans, including the majority of historical students,
who cannot reconcile the traditional insistence
on a specific form of ecclesiastical organization
with the spiritual character of Christ's religion,
and who refuse to regard questions of polity as of
primary importance. They regard Episcopacy
as one among the many types of ecclesiastical
organization which Christianity has developed
in the course of its history, the oldest, most
elastic, and most widely extended, and therefore
probably the most efficient, but having no other
title to the acceptance of Christians than its
proved serviceableness for the purposes of every
system of ecclesiastical government — viz., the
edification of the Church and the evangelization
of the world.

LECTURE VI

THE ESTABLISHMENT

The Church of England holds in the Anglican
Communion a singular position as being alone
— save for a partial exception in India — an
established Church. At one time the Colonial
Churches also were established, but, as self-govern-
ment reached maturity in the Colonies, the eccle-
siastical establishments have been everywhere
abandoned, and the State has taken a merely
secular character, extending legal protection to
all religious bodies, and regarding them in a
friendly spirit, but maintaining towards religion
a rigid and jealously guarded neutrality. Even
in Great Britain disestablishment and disendow-
ment have long been articles of the political creed
of a powerful political party. On this policy
at least Liberals and '' Labour " are at one.
In 1870 the Church of Ireland was disestablished,
and in 1920 the four Welsh dioceses were separated
from the Province of Canterbury, with which
they had been organically united for many
centuries, disestablished, and partially disendowed.
The Church of England, thus reduced in scale

198

VI THE ESTABLISHMENT 199

by the loss of the Welsh bishopricks, still remains
an established Church, but few students of English
politics doubt that the complete secularization
of the State cannot be much longer postponed.
The principal question that now engages the
thought both of politicians and of Churchmen
no longer refers to the policy itself, but only to
the conditions under which it should be carried
through, and the spirit in which so great a revolu-
tion in the ecclesiastical and social life of England
should be accomplished. It is, however, pro-
verbial in English politics that '' threatened
institutions live long." The downfall of the
national establishment of religion has often
before seemed imminent. In the middle of the
eighteenth century, Butler, the greatest Church-
man of the time, is related to have declined
nomination to the Primacy because in his judg-
ment "it was too late to save a falling Church."
Good judges decided that the Church could
not survive the storms of the Reform Bill
agitation. It may well be the case that the
danger which now threatens the establishment
may again pass, and that the ancient union of
Church and State in England may yet have a
long career of beneficent activity before it. In
any case, a study of Anglicanism can hardly
omit some consideration of the theory and working
of the establishment, as it now exists.

200 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vi

The classical statement of the Anglican theory
of Church and State is contained in the eighth
book of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity^ which,
though published posthumously and evidently
without the final revision of the author, may be
accepted as substantially his work. The book is
concerned with the Puritan contention " that
unto no civil prince or governor there may be
given such power of ecclesiastical dominion as
by the laws of this land belongeth unto the
supreme regent thereof." It is divided into
nine sections, which indicate in their titles the
range of the discussion. They are the following:

I. State of the Question between the Church
of England and its Opponents regarding the
King's Supremacy.

II. Principles on which the King's modified
Supremacy is grounded.

III. Warrant for it in the Jewish Dispensation.

IV. Vindication of the Title, Supreme Head
of the Church within his own Dominions.

V. Vindication of the Prerogative regarding
Church Assemblies.

VI. Vindication of the Prerogative regarding
Church Legislation.

VII. Vindication of the Prerogative regarding
Nomination of Bishops.

VIII. Vindication of the Prerogative regarding
Ecclesiastical Courts.

VI THE ESTABLISHMENT 201

IX. Vindication of the Prerogative regarding
Exemption from Excommunication.

Hooker, following the Articles and Canons,
builds much on the Jewish precedent recorded
in the Old Testament, and that part of his
argument hardly appeals to modern minds; but
he is not content with a Biblical case for the
English system. He offers justifications in reason
and experience, which retain validity still. His
refusal to accept the sharp distinction which the
Puritans drew between Church and Common-
wealth goes to the root of the case for Establish-
ment :

" In their opinions the church and the commonwealth
are corporations, not distinguished only in nature and
definition, but in substance perpetually severed; so that
they which are of the one can neither appoint nor execute
in whole nor in part the duties which belong to them
which are of the other, without open breach of the law
of God, which hath divided them, and doth require that,
being so divided, they should distinctly and severally work,
as depending both upon God, and not hanging one upon
the other's approbation for that which either hath to do.

" We say that the care of religion, being common unto
all societies politic, such societies as do embrace the true
religion have the name of the Church given unto every
of them for distinction from the rest; so that every
body politic hath some religion, but the Church that
religion which is only true, ^ruth of religion is that
proper difference whereby a church is distinguished from
other politic societies of men. . . .

202 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vi

" With us, therefore, the name of a church importeth
only a society of men, first united into some public form
of regiment, and secondly distinguished from other
societies by the exercise of Christian religion. With
them on the other side the name of the Church in this
present question importeth not only a multitude of men
so united and so distinguished, but also further the same
divided necessarily and perpetually from the body of the
commonwealth: so that even in such politic society as
consisteth of none but Christians, yet the Church of
Christ and the commonwealth are two corporations,
independently each subsisting by itself."*

The Christian nation is identical w^ith a
Christian Church — that is Hooker's fundamental
assumption. His theory found expression in the
actually existing system of Elizabeth's govern-
ment, which indeed may be assumed to have
suggested it. He states w^ith some care the
limits of the Sovereign's supremacy, and the
conditions of its rightful exercise. The King's
power, he says, must be used " for the received
laws and liberty of the Church," not against
them. Moreover, just as in civil affairs the
King must do nothing " in prejudice of those
ancient laws of nations which are of force through-
out the world," so in ecclesiastical government
he must respect the traditions of Christendom:

" In principal matters belonging to Christian religion,
a thing very scandalous and offensive it must needs be

* Vide Works, voL iii., pt. i., pp. 410, 411 (Oxford, 1836).

VI THE ESTABLISHMENT 203

thought, if either kings or laws should dispose of the
affairs of God, without any respect had to that which of
old hath been reverently thought of throughout the
world, and wherein there is no law of God which forceth
us to swerve from the way wherein so many and so holy
ages have gone."*

After illustrating his argument by a reference
to the polity of Israel, Hooker affirms in a noble
passage the spiritual character even of civil
government :

" A gross error it is, to think that regal power ought
to serve for the good of the body, and not of the soul:
for men's temporal peace, and not for their eternal
safety : as if God had ordained kings for no other end and
purpose but only to fat up men like hogs, and to see that
they have their mast."f

He explains at some length the sense in which
the Sovereign was styled the " Head " of the
Church, and discusses the specific functions
implied in the Headship. The right to legislate
belongs to every free and independent society and
a fortiori to the Church of God :

"'When we speak of the right which naturally be-
longeth to a commonwealth, we speak of that which
needs must belong to the Church of God. For if the
commonwealth be Christian, if the people which are of
it do publicly embrace the true religion, this very thing
doth make it the Church, as hath been shewed. So that
unless the verity and purity of religion do take from them

* P. 447- t P- 453.

204 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vi

which embrace it, that power with which otherwise they
are possessed; look what authority, as touching laws for
religion, a commonwealth hath simply, it must of neces-
sity being Christian have the same as touching laws for
Christian religion."*

" The power of making ecclesiastical laws "
must not be confined to " the clergy in their
synods/' nor may the precedents of the primitive
Church be pleaded to the contrary:

" As now the state of the Church doth stand, kings
not being then that which now they are, and the clergy
not now that which then they were : till it be proved that
some special law of Christ hath for ever annexed unto
the clergy alone the power to make ecclesiastical laws,
we are to hold it a thing most consonant with equity and
reason, that no ecclesiastical laws be made in a Christian
commonwealth, without consent as well of the laity as
of the clergy, but least of all without consent of the
highest power. For of this thing no man doubteth —
namely, that in all societies, companies, and corporations,
what severally each shall be bound unto, it must be with
all their assents ratified. Against all equity it were that
a man should suffer detriment at the hands of men, for
not observing that which he never did either by himself
or by others, mediately or immediately, agree unto;
much more that a king should constrain all others unto
the strict observation of any such human ordinance as
passeth without his own approbation. In this case
therefore especially that vulgar axiom is of force, Quod
omnes tangit ah omnibus tractari et approbari debet^ ^

* P. 502. t P. 504.

VI THE ESTABLISHMENT 205

The right of Parliament to legislate for the
National Church followed directly from this
reasoning:

" The parliament of England, together with the con-
vocation annexed thereunto, is that whereupon the very
essence of all government within this kingdom doth
depend; it is even the body of the whole realm; it con-
sisteth of the king, and of all that within the land are
subject unto him: for they all are there present, either
in person or by such as they voluntarily have derived
their very personal right unto. The parliament is a
court not so merely temporal as if it might meddle with
nothing but only leather and wool."*

Reason and religion agree in referring the
preparation of ecclesiastical laws to the clergy
as men who might fairly be looked upon as
religious experts, but the actual process of legis-
lation could belong to nothing less considerable
than the Parliament which represents the nation :

" The most natural and religious course in making
laws is, that the matter of them be taken from the judg-
ment of the wisest in those things which they are to
concern. In matters of God, to set down a form of
public prayer, a solemn confession of the articles of
Christian faith, rites and ceremonies meet for the exercise
of religion; it were unnatural not to think the pastors
and bishops of our souls a great deal more fit, than men
of secular trades and callings : howbeit when all which the
wisdom of all sorts can do is done for devising of laws in

* P. 511.

2o6 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vi

the Church, it is the general consent of all that giveth
them the form and vigour of laws without which they
could be no more unto us than the counsels of physicians
to the sick: well might they seem as wholesome admoni-
tions and instructions, but laws could they never be
without consent of the whole Church, which is the only
thing that bindeth each member of the Church to be
guided by them. . . . Wherefore to define and deter-
mine even of the Church's affairs by way of assent and
approbation, as laws are defined of in that right of power,
which doth give them the force of laws; thus to define
our own Church's regiment, the parliament of England
hath competent authority."*

It will be noticed that the position of the
clergy in respect of ecclesiastical legislation is
throughout grounded on the reasonable plea
that they are religious experts. The notion *of
any Divine right inherent in them qua clergymen
is w^hoUy absent.

How far did Hooker's assumption of the
identity of the Christian nation and the National
Church correspond with fact ? He could not,
of course, have supposed that the English nation
was in such sense Christian that every Englishman
was a devout believer. The sixteenth century
was as familiar with unbelief and ill-living as
any other. Hooker meant the nation in its
corporate capacity, expressing its common mind
through its laws and institutions and policies.
So judged, the English nation was certainly
* Pp. SI2, 513.

VI THE ESTABLISHMENT 207

Christian, and therefore in Hooker's view was
rightly regarded as an autonomous Church.
The Royal Supremacy was the constitutional
form in which the autonomy of the National
Church found expression, and more, it was for
Hooker and his Anglican contemporaries the
inevitable and divinely ordained form. To the
men of the sixteenth century the first duty of
the supreme " Head " or " Governor " was to
guard the purity of the faith from the attacks of
hereticks, and the unity of the Church from the
perverse individualism of schismatics. Experience
slowly taught, first, the futility of persecution,
and then its inherent wrongness. But the
process of learning implied no failure of the
national Christianity, but rather its advance.
The national legislature under William HI. was
more evidently and consciously swayed by the
principles of Christ's religion when it passed
the Toleration Act than was the national legis-
lature under Charles H. when it passed the
" Clarendon Code." Archbishop Tillotson was
a better exponent of the Gospel than Archbishop
Sheldon. Religious toleration implied a certain
loss of symmetry, but no failure of Christian
principle.

The case is not otherwise when the effect of
the transition from personal to limited monarchy
is considered. There is no necessary incom-

2o8 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vi

patibility between Hooker's main position (viz.,
that a Christian nation has supremacy in matters
ecclesiastical because it constitutes a National
Church) and the exercise of Royal Supremacy,
not by the Sovereign acting as an individual,
but by the Sovereign acting constitutionally
by the advice of the Prime Minister. Law^s
and lawcourts are not less Christian than injunc-
tions and the Court of High Commission. A
modern democracy vests the nation's authority
in the majority of the citizens: so long as the
majority wills to maintain a national profession
of Christianity by an establishment of the Chris-
tian Church, Hooker's assumption retains validity.
It might indeed fairly be argued that national
legislation, since religious toleration was enacted
and the State has become fully democratic, has
been more consonant with the just and humane
principles of the Gospel than it was in the days
when uniformity was enforced by severe penalties,
and when the governing factor within the State
was the Monarch, or the Nobility, or a small
section of the People.

The really serious change in modern times
is to be perceived, not in the law and constitu-
tion of the country, but in its social conditions.
The rapid growth of the population caused
by the transition from a predominantly agricul-
tural society to industrialism, and the consequent

VI THE ESTABLISHMENT 209

massing of the people in the great manufacturing
and distributing centres, have told with disastrous
effect on the relations of Church and State. The
nation has largely outgrown its ecclesiastical
system, so that great multitudes of citizens are
slightly affected, if affected at all, by the National
Church. It is difficult to recognize any obvious
fitness in the application of Hooker's theory of
the Christian nation as ipso facto an autonomous
Church to a nation of which a large proportion,
perhaps a majority, of the citizens stand outside
the public profession of Christianity. Most
English-born people have been baptized, and
mostly they are married, in the parish churches,
and buried with Christian rites ; but these religious
acts have become the conventions of respectable
English life, and are not generally felt to carry
their proper religious significance. Only in a
very shadowy sense can great sections of the
people be described as Christian, save, of course,
for the not unimportant facts, that they are the
heirs of an immemorial tradition of Christianity,
that they breathe a social atmosphere saturated
with Christian ideas, and are in contact, albeit
intermittent and almost unsuspected, with the
National Church.

Statistics are an untrustworthy instrument
for measuring the hold of a National Church
upon the nation. It is certainly the case that,

H

210 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vi

on the most favourable estimate, hardly more
than one-fifth of the population is included in
the formal membership of the Established Church
and of the non - established Nonconformist
Churches; but to this must certainly be added a
large body of persons who, though not counted
in the lists of membership, are connected with
Christianity by many ties, and would deeply
resent exclusion from the Christian description.
Moreover, the least Christian sections of the
community are also for the most part the least
educated and socially considerable. Their in-
fluence is far less than their numbers might
suggest.

An ancient Established Church has its hold
on the nation by many titles, and by many
associations, which are not solely religious. The
position of the Church of England in the life
of the English people is the final result of a long
history. It was never shaped deliberately, though
often in various details deliberately modified
and revised; but in its essential features it is the
final phase of a development which has been
coeval with the nation itself. The severance
of Church and State in England would be a
very violent proceeding, if violence be measured
by the extent of the breach of historic conti-
nuity. Christianity would be gravely prejudiced
by the disestablishment and disendowment of the

VI THE ESTABLISHMENT 211

Church of England. So much can hardly be dis-
puted even by those who think that the prejudice
would be but temporary, and that ultimately
religion would gain in quality and influence.
Obviously much would depend on the actual
process of disestablishment, the terms imposed
on the Church in the dissolution of its imme-
morial association with the State, and the spirit
in which those terms were carried into effect.
The broad eifect of English legislation since
the Reform Act has been to loosen the ties
which hold Church and State together. If it
were not for the ecclesiastical property the formal
severance might be consummated with but little
difficulty. But disendowment, the inevitable
accompaniment of disestablishment, is really the
core of the practical problem. No circumstance
at the present time tells more injuriously upon
the efficiency of the National Church than the
poverty of the parochial clergy. The loss of the
endowments (which exceed ^3,000,000 in annual
income, apart from the residence houses existing
in nearly all the parishes) would create a situation
so grave that no responsible Churchman can con-
template it without dismay. What will become
of the cathedrals and parish churches, which
include the noblest historical monuments in the
country ? Apart from the endowments they could
hardly be used and maintained in many places.

212 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vi

Their secularization would inflict a deep wound
on the self-respect of the nation. Yet it is
difficult to see how a disestablished Church,
thrown upon its own resources — that is,
dependent on the voluntary contributions of
its own members — could retain possession of
buildings which are the heirlooms of the English
people, as well as places consecrated to Christian
worship and teaching. If the bulk of the property
should be secularized, it appears inevitable that
the scale of ecclesiastical effort would have to
be largely reduced. In the words of the homely
proverb, the garment would have to be cut
according to the cloth. But the disappearance
of a resident ministry from the small country
parishes would certainly be felt as a social priva-
tion by the people, and could not but weaken
the influence of Christianity in the nation.

Not less unfortunate would be the result of
disendowment on the position of the clergy,
for they would lose the most effective securities
of pastoral independence — a secure income and
a fixed tenure of office. Compelled to depend to
a large extent, if not altogether, on the voluntary
contributions of their congregations, they would
surely find themselves perilously dependent for
their maintenance on their personal popularity.
Such dependence accords ill with the work of a
moral teacher, whose duty may require conduct

VI THE ESTABLISHMENT 213

which is highly unpopular, and whose perform-
ance of that duty must needs become vastly
more difficult when it is conditioned by material
loss. The independence of the clergyman, which
may well be reckoned the indispensable condition
of his spiritual efficiency, would be further
endangered by the unavoidable change in the
method of his appointment to office and the
conditions of his tenure. Few parts of the estab-
lished system have been more severely criticized
in recent years than those which concern these
cardinal concerns of appointment and tenure.
" Private patronage " and " the freehold in the
benefice " figure prominently in the latest attacks
on the Establishment. It^may be freely admitted
that neither can be easily reconciled with any
coherent and satisfying theory of spiritual office,
that both have lent themselves but too readily
to grave abuse; and yet it may be fairly urged
that neither lacks effective apology in the opinion
of those, not the least judicious or the least
religious of citizens, who are accustomed to
subordinate theoretical requirements to practical
considerations.

" Private patronage " has its roots in a distant
past, and presupposes a state of society which
is everywhere passing away, and in most places
has already disappeared. That the right to
appoint to spiritual office should be itself a

214 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vi

property, capable as such of sale, purchase, and
bequest, is indeed a startling paradox; and the
law has within recent years shown a disposition
to surround the exercise of the patron's owner-
ship rights with many restrictions designed to
mitigate, if not wholly to restrain, its abuse.
Originally the patron derived his right to nomi-
nate the parish clergyman from the fact that
he had himself built the parish church, and
endowed it with a sufficient maintenance for
the minister. This was a respectable and suffi-
cient title, but it tended to lose both respecta-
bility and sufficiency as time passed, and the
very memory of the original benefaction faded
from memory. In the course of centuries families
died out, their possessions passed into other hands,
and now there is a tangled history of many
legal transactions behind the actual ownership
of patronage rights. So long indeed as the
country gentlemen lived on their estates they
had an evident interest in the parish church.
The incumbent was always a near neighbour;
his duties necessitated a measure of intimacy;
his character and pastoral efficiency were of
considerable importance to the general welfare.
It might be argued with considerable plausi-
bility that the local landowner was marked out by
his position as the best guardian of the parochial
concern in the parson's appointment, since of

VI THE ESTABLISHMENT 215

all the parishioners he was himself probably the
most closely affected by it. The argument,
however, takes too little account of possible
divergence of interest, economic and political,
between the local landowner and his neighbours,
who are also his tenants, and it ignores the
temptation which may dispose him to use his
privileged position for the advantage of his
family. In point of fact both of these contin-
gencies have been disastrously common. The
parson and the squire have become identified
in the view of the rural population as champions
and beneficiaries of economic interests and politi-
cal opinions which no longer command general
acceptance, and are actively resented by increasing
numbers of people. From " private patronage "
has grown the strange phenomenon of the
" family living," and this feature of the English
Establishment is only now declining, since the
growth of a more sensitive public opinion and
the increasing poverty of the clergy have rendered
the life of a country incumbent arduous and
unattractive to the gentry.

All this cannot be denied, but there is another
side to the " family living." The English are
an intensely conservative people, and rural life
presents problems not easily solved, or even
understood, by strangers. It has certainly been
no inconsiderable advantage that so many

n6 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vi

parishes have been in the hands of men belong-
ing to local families of consequence, possessed of
sufficient private income to be indifferent to
the inadequacy of the official endow^ment, and
familiarized from their birth v^ith country
people, whose distinctive points of view they
share, and whose peculiar difficulties they know.
No well-informed observer of parochial life in
the country would pass an undiscriminating con-
demnation on " private patronage," or even
on the system of " family livings." The abuses
have been numerous and considerable, but the
total effect has not been universally, or even
generally, unsatisfactory.

Much the same may be said of the " freehold "
in his " benefice," which secures to the parish
clergyman, so long as he fulfils his statutory
obligations (which are by no means heavy), a
life-tenure of his '^cure of souls." In the one
scale there may be placed the ill-effects of this
secure position in the weakening of discipline
and the encouragement of indolence; in the
other scale, there must go the sense of pastoral
independence, the enhancement of personal
consequence, the closer identification with the
social life of the parish, and especially the relief
from humiliating anxiety. It is hard to say
which scale kicks the beam. Within recent years
the law has imposed limitations on the parson's

VI THE ESTABLISHMENT 217

freehold by strengthening the disciplinary powers
of the Bishop. The principal reason why grave
scandals still continue is far more often the
impossibility of obtaining adequate evidence of
misconduct than the lack of episcopal authority
or the absence of a desire on the part of the
Bishops to enforce the law. There is the greatest
reluctance on the side of the parishioners to bear
testimony against their parson, whose ill- behaviour
may be none the less notorious, and the subject
of bitter and continual complaint. The situation
in all disciplinary concerns is still further com-
plicated by the circumstance that the parish
clergyman is almost always married. Compassion
for the hardship entailed on the wife and children
disinclines the neighbours for the odious tasks
of formal delation and hostile witness. Thus
the grossest scandals may be perpetuated, not
by the defects of the legal system, nor by
any failure of episcopal duty, but by the
compassionate condonation of the parishioners.
Happily scandal is infrequent, though indolence
is too common among the rural incumbents.
The smallness of the populations, the conse-
quent absence of any effective public opinion,
and the general stagnation of life, are all un-
favourable to clerical exertion. In the circum-
stances a fair critic might perhaps be disposed
to emphasize rather the small extent than

2i8 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vi

the grave character of clerical failure in rural
England.

The war has had an unfortunate effect on the
country parishes, for no section of the com-
munity has suffered so heavily both in life and
in property as the landowners. In many cases
the last representatives of ancient county families
have perished in the conflict; in all the crushing
burden of the taxation caused by the monstrous
expenditure of the war has rendered residence
in the old homes difficult if not altogether
impossible. The result is apparent in sales of
land on an unprecedented scale. An agrarian
revolution is silently passing over the country.
In the room of the old families, who knew and
loved the districts in which they had lived for
generations, there is coming into the country
a new type of landowner, which knows little
and cares less about rural life. The parish
clergy have lost their principal supporters, and
find themselves embarrassed by the withdrawal
of financial assistance, and shadowed by the
absence of friendly and congenial neighbours.
Time may mitigate and even remove the dis-
advantage, but for the present it is acutely felt.

In the country the principal problems of eccle-
siastical administration arise from the poverty
and loneliness of the incumbents. In the towns,
the most pressing episcopal embarrassments arise

VI THE ESTABLISHMENT 219

from the lawlessness of the parochial clergy.
The legal system has been brought to a deadlock
by the organized disobedience of a considerable
section of the " Catholic " clergy. The key to
this astonishing situation lies in the circumstances
of the English Reformation.

The ecclesiastical courts of the medieval Church
survived the Reformation, but the appellate
jurisdiction of the Papacy was transferred to the
Sovereign, and the law which was administered
in them was no longer the Roman canon law,
which had governed their procedure in England
as throughout the West, but " the King's ecclesi-
astical law " enacted by Parliament and (under
the strait conditions imposed by the Submission
of the Clergy, 1532) by the provincial Convoca-
tions. It had been intended by the Reformers
to review, revise, and recast the medieval code,
and the Reformatio Legum remains the consider-
able but abortive result of their efforts in this
direction. Legal authority was never given
to this curious essay in ecclesiastical legislation,
which is chiefly valuable to the historical student
for the light it casts on the principles and ideals
of its authors. Thus it has happened that
Henry VIII. 's makeshift arrangement for bridg-
ing over the interval during which the revision
of the medieval canons was being effected has
been perpetuated, and the Pre- Reformation code

220 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vi

has not only to some extent retained authority
in the Reformed Church, but has acquired
statutory force. What was an historical accident
has been transformed by the eager ingenuity of
partisanship into an ecclesiastical principle, and
many illegalities are gravely justified by modern
Anglo- Catholics by appeals to the canonical code
of the unref ormed Church.

The Tractarians themselves do not appear to
have objected against the ecclesiastical courts,
but their disciples soon discovered that courts
created by Parliament, and drawing their juris-
diction from the Sovereign, were lacking in
" spiritual " authority. Their worst suspicions
were confirmed by the hostile verdicts which
were passed in them so soon as the Tractarian
innovations became the subjects of litigation.
To breaches of the law there now succeeded a
reasoned repudiation of the entire legal system
of the Established Church. In the eyes of the
scrupulous Anglo - Catholic no part of the
ecclesiastical machinery retains authority, for all
proceeds under the Royal Supremacy constitu-
tionally exercised by the final court of appeal,
the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
Public opinion in England is rightly sensitive
whenever the claim of the individual conscience
is concerned. Prosecutions for ceremonial ille-
gality were not infrequent when the novelty of

VI THE ESTABLISHMENT 221

the innovations was fresh and the resentment
they provoked keen, but they practically ceased
as soon as the conscientious character of the
lawlessness became apparent. At the present
time the coercive discipline of the Church of
England is almost completely paralyzed. This
highly anomalous situation perplexes and humili-
ates the Episcopate. The Bishops are endeavour-
ing to maintain order and discipline without
recourse to the lawcourts. Episcopal authority,
so enthusiastically exalted in theoretical argu-
ments, is as enthusiastically repudiated in practice.
Like the guinea which the Vicar of Wakefield
bestowed on his daughters, not to be expended
but possessed for the honour of the family, the
Apostolical Succession in the Church of England
might seem designed to serve less as a principle
of spiritual government than as the proof of
ecclesiastical character. In effect, the attempt
to maintain order in the Church by episcopal
authority without recourse to the lawcourts has
met with little success. There has developed
within the National Church a new kind of
Congregationalism, not less " independent " than
the old of external control because it is self-
styled '' Catholic," and professes an ardent
belief in the Apostolic authority of the Bishops !
Anachronisms and anomalies may be more
defensible in practice than in theory. That this

222 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vi

is the case with those which abound in the
Established Church is strongly argued hy many
of its most thoughtful and attached members.
It has been already pointed out that the much-
denounced abuses which have grown about the
parochial system do, as a matter of experience,
secure important advantages, which go some
way towards justifying their continuance. In
respect of the naked Congregationalism, which
marks the latest phase of the Oxford Movement,
a similar plea may be offered. Society, it may
be urged, is in process of rapid change. In such
circumstances a rigid ecclesiastical system, such
as that which the Establishment was designed
to secure, is ill adapted to satisfy the spiritual
needs of the English people. It is to the ultimate
advantage of the national Christianity that there
should be large liberty of experiment in the
sphere of pastoral and congregational life. That
liberty is necessarily refused by the law, and by
the Bishops, as charged with the administration
of the law, but it may be none the less indis-
pensable in the interest of religion. It is better
that it should be gained by the lawless action of
individuals than that it should not be gained
at all. The argument is plausible, and not
without real force. But there are considerations
on the other side which must be held to outweigh
it. Lawlessness is not favourable to virtue, and

VI THE ESTABLISHMENT 223

a clergy habituated to disobedience is not well
placed for the task of preaching morality. It
is certain that the influence of the parish clergy
has been gravely weakened by the association in
the public mind of the clerical profession and
a lower standard of truthfulness and loyalty
than the general conscience demands. Much
is forgiven to zeal and devotion; but men feel
that the pleas offered in excuse for clerical ille-
gality are often trivial and insincere, the fruits
of a hair-splitting casuistry, not of a candid
intelligence. Nor can it be doubted that there
are grave searchings of heart among the law-
breaking clergy themselves. A bad or doubtful
conscience in the pastor does not promote his
efficiency, nor may it be supposed that his industry
and self-sacrifice can really atone for behaviour
that is essentially indefensible. The nation
stands to lose heavily by the moral discredit
which clerical lawlessness and ill - faith have
brought upon the clergy of the Church of
England.

The war has affected deeply the system and
working of the Established Church. To it,
more than to any other cause, must be attributed
the rapid and almost unopposed success of the
agitation for autonomy which carried the Enab-
ling Act (1919). The passing of this Act marks
a new departure of the utmost importance in the

224 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vi

history of the National Church. Two streams
of discontent blended in the agitation of which
the Act was the result. On the one hand, the
practical Reformers, of whom many were Radicals
in politics, and as such advocates of disestablish-
ment, sought to " democratize " the Church hy
abolishing the " autocracy of the incumbent,"
and vesting power in parish councils elected
by the parishioners. On the other hand, the
Anglo-Catholics, pursuing their ideal of a medieval
independence of the Church, aimed at the aboli-
tion of " State control," and the attainment
of ecclesiastical autonomy. There was little in
common between the two save extreme discontent
with the existing state of things and an eager
desire for speedy and drastic change. Both
favoured disestablishment, but neither felt it
judicious openly to avow as much, for the general
body of Anglicans was still frankly hostile to
that policy. '' Life and Liberty " was a plea
more telling and less open to objection, though
its implied suggestion that the Establishment
involved the Church in paralysis of its spiritual
life, and in privation of its spiritual liberty,
could hardly be reconciled with any policy that
stopped short of severing the link between Church
and State. The fervour of the agitators was
assisted by the lassitude of the nation. The
war absorbed general attention. Most English

VI THE ESTABLISHMENT 225

laymen were either serving in the fleets and
armies or were engaged in war work at home.
They could not, even if they had desired, withdraw
themselves from the urgent business of the hour
in order to consider ecclesiastical questions which,
in more normal times, would have merited and
received their attention. Another circumstance
facilitated the agitation. In the earlier stages
of the war the Archbishops, yielding to the
disordered enthusiasm of the time, had organized
a National Mission, which had brought into
prominence within the Church a considerable
number of younger clergy, and laity of both
sexes, whose ardour was out of all proportion to
their knowledge and experience, and who were
but too ready to attribute the apparent failures
of the Church to the faults of its Establishment.
Thus the normal checks on precipitate action
were removed precisely at the moment when
proposals for drastic change were being most
eagerly advocated. The close of the war disclosed
a domestic situation of extreme complexity and
considerable danger. A great demand for the
reconstruction of society swept over the country.
The air was filled with reforming projects.
Why should the Church, which of all the national
institutions seemed most plainly calling for
reform, lie outside the general process ? There
were not wanting those who pointed out that

15

226 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vi

the excitements of the time were very unfavour-
able to the patient and far-sighted wisdom
which were indispensable if reforms, whether in
Church or State, were to be sound and lasting.
Their prudent remonstrances were listened to
with impatience, and swept aside with contempt.
The project of transforming the National Church
into an autonomous denomination, and re-
modelling its system on the lines of the non-
established or disestablished churches of Great
Britain, the United States, and the Colonies —
which had long been advocated by small coteries
of Churchmen and was being enthusiastically
advocated by the "Life and Liberty" agitators —
" held the field " as the only coherent policy of
Church Reform. The Enabling Bill was passed
through both Houses of Parliament with unex-
pected rapidity, for it had been drawn with
such skill that, under the rules of the House of
Commons as interpreted by the Speaker, its
principal provisions could not be discussed.
Before the end of 1919 the Bill received the
Royal Assent, and a new chapter in the long
history of the Church of England was opened.

Under the Enabling Act (1919) a " National
Assembly of the Church of England," consisting
of the Bishops, the members of the two Convoca-
tions, and a body of elected laity, has been set
up, and clothed with legislative powers. The

VI THE ESTABLISHMENT 227

authority of Parliament has in theory been
preserved without alteration, and an elaborate
machinery has been created with the object of
ensuring the constitutional character of the
legislation which shall be passed by the new
body; but in practice the task of ecclesiastical
legislation has been transferred from Parliament
to the new National Assembly, and Parliament
really retains little more than a veto on the
legislation submitted to it under the Act. In
every parish there is established a parochial
council clothed with statutory powers, of which
the precise extent has not yet been defined, but
which will certainly be considerable. In fixing
the qualifications of the parochial electors, the
Enabling Act abandons the old generous assump-
tion of the common law, that every English-
born person is if so facto a member of the Church
of England, and limits the franchise to those
parishioners of both sexes above the age of
eighteen, who have been baptized, and have
signed a declaration that they "do not belong
to any religious body which is not in communion
with the Church of England."

It has been objected that this franchise drives
out of membership in the National Church
many religious persons who have hitherto claimed
it. Great numbers of English Nonconformists,
especially among the Methodists and Wesleyans,

228 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vi

have clung to the view, which has strong justifica-
tion in the history of English religion, that they
do not necessarily renounce their membership
in the National Church by joining some other
society of Christians. " Occasional conformity "
has been defended by eminent Anglicans as a
proof of large-minded charity rather than as an
evidence of latitudinarian indifference. These
friendly Nonconformists have been accustomed
to receive the Holy Communion from time to
time in the parish churches; they have often
served as churchwardens; and, as householders,
they have always had their place in the parish
vestries where the churchwardens are annually
elected and other ecclesiastical business is trans-
acted. By the Enabling Act they are deprived
of these rights, and will be legally excluded from
membership in the National Church. The effect
of this change in the law can hardly be favourable
to the spirit and practice of Christian fraternity,
and the change is in fact deplored by many
excellent Christians, both Anglican and Non-
conformist.

The time has not yet arrived for passing a
judgment on the Enabling Act, but its incongruity
with the idea and policy of the English Establish-
ment is apparent. It is sufficiently evident,
indeed, that the maintenance of a religious
establishment in a modern democracy has become

VI THE ESTABLISHMENT 229

extremely difficult, and there is little likelihood
that the difficulty will grow less in the future.
Under the conditions which disestablishment
would create, the autonomy conferred by the
EnabHng Act, or at least autonomy of some kind,
would be indispensable to the Church. It may
be true — as the principal promoters of the Act
would maintain — that the policy of habituating
the Church of England beforehand for the situa-
tion which the crisis of disestablishment will
create, may serve to facilitate the ultimate
reconstruction of the ecclesiastical system. This
apology assumes the secularization of the English
State. In that unhappy event the State will not
be the only, nor perhaps the principal sufferer,
though the distinction is unreal since there is
no interest of the State really comparable in
vital importance with the efficiency in the
deepest sense of the Christian society. The
distinction between Church and State, inevitable
in political discussions, really enshrines a dangerous
fallacy, as Hooker perceived. Using the terms
in their conventional senses, the State would
suffer less than the Church from the process of
formal secularization. The intimate association
with the national life which the Establishment
has expressed and secured has had its effect — a
beneficent effect — on the type of Christianity
presented to the English people. If the interest

230 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vi

of ecclesiastical efficiency, the easy working of
the administrative system, be alone considered,
it is easy to imagine that there might even be
advantages in disestablishment. It is certainly
arguable that, in all the circumstances of modern
society, establishment is rather a hindrance than
an assistance to efficiency in this respect. One
by one the old incidents of the State connection
have disappeared. Only the presence of the
Archbishops and Bishops in the House of Lords,
the Crown patronage of the higher positions in
the hierarchy, and the discredited system of the
ecclesiastical courts survive. It may well appear
that these might be surrendered with little
loss to the Church, and with substantial relief
to the State. But when from the Church {i.e.,
the clerical machine) we pass to religion the case
is far otherwise.

Hitherto in England there has been no such
sharp antagonism between Christianity and
modern culture as in the Latin countries and
in Germany is but too evident. The contrast
which Voltaire commented upon before the
Revolution has not even yet disappeared. A
large, tolerant version of Christianity has in
England been met by a type of religious scepticism
which is considerate and respectful. In France
the narrow zeal of the Jesuitized Church has
been reflected in the bitter anti- clericalism of

VI THE ESTABLISHMENT 231

the State. Disestablishment will tend to approxi-
mate the situation in England to that which has
long existed in France. This process of assimila-
tion, perhaps, will be facilitated by that closer
intercourse between the two countries which is
one certain consequence of the war. Clericalism
and secularism have much in common. Both
unite in demanding a sharp severance between
" spiritual " and " secular " concerns. The
essential idea of establishment disallows that
severance as unnatural, unwholesome, and in
principle un- Christian. Church and State alike
stand to lose hy the triumph of these kindred
though conflicting tendencies, clericalist and
secularist. For religion is less a distinct interest
than a penetrating spirit. The isolation of the
clergy from the normal activities of citizenship
is fraught with danger to the soundness of their
teaching; the exclusion of the clergy from the
service of the State tends to empty that service
of its highest significance. The student of
Christianity will regard professionalism as a not
less formidable enemy than Erastianism. It must
be added that, while the conditions under which
the clergy must work in a modern democracy are
unfavourable to the historic causes of Erastian
complaisance, those conditions are eminently
favourable to the development within the Chris-
tian Church of a narrow-minded professionalism

232 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vi

which exalts the letter of religion and ignores
the spirit.

The patriotic Englishman will not lightly ap-
prove the dissolution of that close union between
Church and State which has brought so many
blessings to the nation; the considering Church-
man will be slow to facilitate a change which
must needs have such formidable consequences on
the work and witness of the Church.

What the Church has effected for the nation
through the many centuries of their organic
union may be illustrated by a scene very familiar
to those who visit London. The grouped build-
ings of Westminster are a parable in stone, in
which the institutions of the national life are
all significantly symbolized. On one side, the
Houses of Parliament and the ancient Hall of
Westminster recall the representative and judicial
factors; on another side, the famous public
school worthily presents to view the system
of national education. Dean's Yard, with its
numerous offices, each one the centre of some
great philanthropic agency, may stand for the
manifold activities of social reform; across the
road are the Central Hall of a great Nonconformist
denomination and a large Hospital, each bearing
a distinctive witness too plain to be mistaken.
Right in the centre, as a mother in the midst of
her children, stands the fairest and oldest member

VI THE ESTABLISHMENT 233

of the group, the peerless Abbey Church of
Westminster, the creation and the symbol of
that mighty and beneficent institution which has
stimulated and developed all the rest, under
whose protecting shadow all the rest grew and
flourished, the National Church of England.
Disestablishment and disendowment, regarded
in the light of history, appear equivalent to the
proposal to improve the aspect of the grouped
buildings of Westminster by levelling to the
ground the noblest of them all !

LECTURE VII

THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE

The National Church has shared the fortunes
of the nation. Just as the insular people has
in the course of the last three, and mainly during
the last two, centuries spread over the world,
and become the possessor and ruler of the
vastest and most populous empire of which
history has knowledge, so the island Church has
been extended into the most distant regions of
the earth, and now is compelled to realize the
consequences of the fact on its own system and
outlook. The Encyclical just issued of the
Sixth Lambeth Conference finds in the cosmo-
politan character of Anglicanism a reason for
thinking that the Anglican Church may be able
to point the way to the reunion of Christendom :

" The characteristics of that (Anglican) fellowship are
well worth attention when the reunion of the world-wide
Church is in men's thoughts. The fact that the Anglican
Communion has become world-wide forces upon it some
of the problems which must always beset the unity of the
Catholic Church itself. Perhaps, as we ourselves are
dealing with these problems, the way will appear in which
the future reunited Church must deal with them."

234

VII THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE 235

Be this as it may, no account of Anglicanism
can refuse to give a prominent place to the
decennial gatherings of Anglican Bishops, of
which the sixth has just completed its sessions
at Lambeth. That these gatherings have already
exercised a profound influence on the beliefs and
ideals of the Anglican Communion, and notably
of the Church of England, cannot be questioned,
nor that this influence is growing quickly, and
will have decisive weight in the future. It is
important, therefore, to appraise justly the
quality of that influence, and the conditions
under which it affects the development of
Anglicanism. In this lecture we propose to
discuss the origin and character, the method, and
the effect of the Lambeth Conference.

I. Origin and Character.

In i860, the Convocation of Canterbury con-
demned a volume of Essays and Reviews which
had been published by a small group of Lib-
eral Churchmen, of whom the most eminent
were Jowett, Mark Pattison, and Temple, after-
wards Archbishop of Canterbury. A great con-
troversy arose, and soon led to litigation. Two
of the essayists were prosecuted in the Court of
Arches, and were suspended by that Court.
On appeal to the Privy Council, however, the

236 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vii

sentence was reversed. This evident superiority
of the secular over the ecclesiastical authority
gave the utmost oifence to the Anglican clergy,
now largely leavened by Tractarian views on
Church and State. The fear of heresy was
united with the hatred of Erastianism. Fuel
was added to the fire when, in 1862, Colenso,
Bishop of Natal, published a volume on the
Pentateuch, in which the historical character of
the Mosaic narratives was roughly handled. The
Church in South Africa was then headed by a
zealous Tractarian, Gray, Bishop of Cape Town,
and he made no delay in giving practical expression
to what he conceived to be the duty of a Catholic
hierarchy confronted by false teaching. Colenso
was deposed, but on appeal to the Privy Council
was sustained in his bishoprick. It was held by
the judges that Bishop Gray possessed no such
jurisdiction as he had assumed. Thus the same
formidable issues were presented in new and
unexpected circumstances. The poison of Eras-
tianism was infecting the Daughter Churches,
and heresy, detected and condemned by the
spiritual authority, could count on the protection
of the civil! Alarm spread throughout the
Colonial Churches, and from one of them, the
Church of Canada, came the suggestion that
the whole episcopate of the Anglican Communion
should be assembled for the treatment of so

VII THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE 237

grave a mischief. On September 20th, 1865, at
the Provincial Synod of the Canadian Church,
a motion v^as unanimously carried begging the
Archbishop of Canterbury to devise means
" by which the members of our Anglican Com-
munion in all quarters of the world should have
a share in the deliberations for her welfare, and be
permitted to have a representation in one general
council of her members gathered from every land."
The very phrase employed — " general council "
— carried an implication of authority, which in
the actual circumstances could not fail to be
highly significant, and did in fact arouse the
suspicions of all those Anglicans who valued
the final authority of the State as the security
of theological liberty and, not less, of the just
treatment of clergymen accused of heresy. The
Canadian proposal secured the support of the
Lower House of the Convocation of Canterbury,
which (May, 1866) conveyed to the Archbishop
" a respectful expression of an earnest desire
that he would be pleased to issue an invitation
to all the Bishops in communion with the Church
of England, to assemble at such time and place,
and accompanied by such persons as may be
deemed fit, for the purpose of Christian sympathy
and mutual counsel on matters affecting the
welfare of the Church at home and abroad."
The language of this resolution was quite general,

238 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vii

but it could not but be interpreted in the light
of another resolution which was also passed by-
Convocation :

" That Dr. Colenso, having been not only excommu-
nicated by the Bishop of Cape Town and the Bishops of
South Africa with him in Synod, but also deposed from
his office of bishop — if a bishop shall be duly elected and
consecrated for the See of Natal in the place of Bishop
Colenso — the Church of England would of necessity
hold communion with that Bishop."

The Archbishop of Canterbury (Longley)
exerted himself to remove the apprehensions
which were widely felt as to the probable action
of such an assembly of Bishops as he was pressed
to convoke. In the Upper House of Convocation
he used the clearest language:

" It should be distinctly understood," he said, ' that
at this meeting no declaration of faith shall be made, and
no decision come to which shall affect generally the
interests of the Church, but that we shall meet together
for brotherly counsel and encouragement. ... I should
refuse to convene any assembly which pretended to enact
any canons, or affected to make any decisions binding
on the Church. ... I feel I undertake a great respon-
sibility in assenting to this request, and certainly if I saw
anything approaching to what is apprehended as likely
to result from it, I should not be disposed to sanction it,
but I can assure my brethren that I should enter on
this meeting in the full confidence that nothing would
pass but that which tended to brotherly love and union,

VII THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE 239

and would bind the Colonial Church, which is certainly
in a most unsatisfactory state, more closely to the Mother
Church."

This attitude found expression in the formal
invitation which (February 22nd, 1867) was
issued from Lambeth to all the Bishops of the
Anglican Communion, then 144 in number,
and again, in his opening address to the Con-
ference, when it met in September, 1867, the
President emphasized the same point :

" It has never been contemplated," he said, " that we
should assume the functions of a general synod of all the
Churches in full communion with the Church of England,
and take upon ourselves to enact canons that should
be binding upon those here represented. We merely
propose to discuss matters of practical interest, and
pronounce what we deem expedient in resolutions which
may serve as safe guides to future action. Thus it will
be seen that our first essay is rather tentative and experi-
mental, in a matter in which we have no distinct pre-
cedent to direct us."

These reiterated assurances did not suffice to
dispel the misgivings which occasioned them.
The Archbishop of York and the Bishops of
Durham, Carlisle, Ripon, Peterborough, and
Manchester, declined to attend the Conference,
and others, including Bishop Thirlwall of
S. David's, " postponed their acceptance until
the official agenda paper or programme should be

240 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vii

published, a fact to which they afterwards called
attention when the programme had unexpectedly-
been changed." In truth, the situation was
such that, with the best intentions, the Arch-
bishop was unable to carry out his pledges :

" No sooner had the Conference assembled than it
became evident that the pledge of excluding the Natal
difficulty from the discussion could not be kept. At the
preliminary meeting the attempt was made to bring the
question forward, and on more than one occasion the
topic was reintroduced. On the fourth day the Bishop
of Cape Town made a determined effort to procure from
the assembled bishops their sanction to the consecration
of a new Bishop of Natal. He even threatened to resign
his see if his proposal were rejected. After a heated
debate, a hypothetical resolution was adopted declaring
that, if a new bishop were consecrated, there would be
no necessary severance of communion between the Home
and the Colonial Church. This resolution was inter-
preted by Bishop Gray to mean that the Conference had
given its approval to the appointment of a new bishop.
Such a misunderstanding, which could hardly have arisen
unless the proceedings had been secret, may be thought
to have justified Stanley's demand for complete pub-
licity."*

Dean Stanley, who had stood forward as the
courageous champion of Bishop Colenso, resented
the action of the Conference so deeply that he
took a step which startled public opinion, and
gave great umbrage to the American Bishops,
* Vide Life of Dean Stanley^ vol. ii., p. 197.

VII THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE 241

who were ignorant of the constitution of the
Church of England, and could not understand
how a Dean of Westminster could refuse the
request of an Archbishop of Canterbury.

" The Conference concluded with a special service.
Before the opening of the proceedings the Archbishop
expressed a wish to hold this service in Westminster
Abbey. In the uncertainty that Stanley felt as to the
purposes for which the Conference was summoned, he
feared that it might be used for party objects, such as
giving support to the Bishop of Cape Town, repudiating
the judgment of the Privy Council, and confirming the
alleged deposition of the Bishop of Natal. He therefore
declined to promise the use of the building for the pro-
posed special service, though he offered it for other
objects."

His offer was refused, and the Dean found
himself exposed to the severe criticism of the
" religious " press. A courteous letter addressed
to the Bishop of Vermont, in order to remove
the impression of discourtesy which the American
Bishops had received, drew from the Bishop a
long and rudely worded reply, which disclosed
his own ignorance of English conditions and
his incapacity to understand the motives of
his correspondent. These incidents, in many
respects deplorable, had at least this useful result
that they rooted in the public mind the under-
standing that the decennial meeting of Anglican

16

242 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vii

Bishops was not designed to claim the character
or attempt the functions of an ecclesiastical
synod. This understanding has been reiterated
repeatedly by successive Archbishops of Canter-
bury, but it may be questioned whether it com-
mands the wholehearted assent of any save the
important minority of Liberal Churchmen who
have drawn from their study of ecclesiastical
history a deep distrust of conciliar decisions
in matters of doctrine, and who perceive ever
more clearly how disastrous to the highest
interests of religious truth would be the inter-
vention of clerical authority in the intellectual
movements of the modern world. Bishop Wilber-
force, the most conspicuous representative of
Tractarian opinions in the first Lambeth Confer-
ence, writing to Bishop Milman (August 27th,
1867), expressed the mental attitude which the
Anglo- Catholic Anglican still adopts towards the
assembly of the Anglican Episcopate:

" We have now a very anxious matter in the Pan-
Anglican Synod. We cannot act synodically; and yet to
meet and not to act has a damaging air of weakness. . . .
Being silent when the Church, if she could, certainly
ought to speak, is no small evil and must be a scandal."*

It is not unimportant to note that this Bishop
drafted the Encyclical which was issued by the
Conference.

* Vide Life of Bishop Wilberforce, vol. iii., p. 229.

VII THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE 243

n. Method of the Conference.

The Lambeth Conference is composed solely of
Bishops. Whether this was originally intended
may be doubted. The Lower House of the
Canterbury Convocation had suggested that
the Bishops should be " accompanied by such
persons as may be deemed fit," and certainly
the actual composition of the Lower House and
its constitutional position as an integral element
in the Provincial Synod were difficult to reconcile
with a purely episcopal character in the repre-
sentative assembly of the Anglican Communion.
The republican habit of the American Church
pointed in the same direction. When the second
Lambeth Conference was being projected, the
Bishop of Pittsburgh indicated to Archbishop
Tait that scruples were felt in the United States :

" While the Bishops generally were very favourably
disposed towards the proposal (of a second Conference),
some of them wished that any action of the Bishops
should be preceded by some expression from the clerical
and lay deputies that would prevent any thought that
the Bishops were acting for themselves alone, and not
also for and with the clergy and laity/'

In spite of these indications of dissent, however,
the purely episcopal character of the Conference
has been maintained, and the mere increase of
the number of the Bishops attending may well

244 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vii

seem to render any change impossible. The
occasional invitation of " experts " to attend
and address the Conference, or to give evidence
before the Conference Committees, is the only
mitigation of the fact. Two consequences of
considerable importance have flowed from this
circumstance. On the one hand, the debates
have been secret; on the other hand, the con-
clusions of the Conference have been put forward
in the authoritative style of Bishops : '^ We^ Arch-
bishops and Bishops of the Holy Catholic Churchy
etc.'^ Both these consequences are unfortunate.
The one operates to the heavy disadvantage of
the minority, which may none the less, as is not
uncommonly the case in ecclesiastical assemblies,
include the best learning and judgment of the
Conference. The other creates an atmosphere
of unreality, which affects both the Bishops
themselves and the Church which they represent
and address. In view of the repeatedly empha-
sized fact that the Lambeth Conference is solely
a consultative body, the principal value of its
debates must be educative. That this is the
case with the Bishops themselves is certain; that
it would be the case with the public generally
cannot be doubted. The subjects which are
brought into discussion at a Lambeth Conference
include many which are novel, complicated, and
extremely important. There should surely attach

VII THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE 245

great value to the reasonings by which men
charged with the solemn responsibilities of the
episcopal office, and representing so wide a
range of experience as the Bishops of the Anglican
Communion, are led to their decisions. The
reasonings may well be more serviceable than
the resolutions, which, standing alone, may be
difficult to understand. Publicity of debate
would enable the religious public to judge the
value of the resolutions, and to do justice to the
minorities. It must be remembered that epis-
copal theory requires that one Bishop shall be
regarded as equal to every other. The distinc-
tive note of episcopal utterance is the note of
authority. The Bishop is, on the episcopalian
theory, possessed, by title of his consecration,
not merely with the right to declare the mind
of the Catholic Church, but with a specific
competence for the task. One Bishop may be
more learned, more experienced, more sagacious
than another, but these qualities give him no
greater authority, although the whole worth
of his opinion must depend on them. If the
debates of the Lambeth Conference were public,
the difference in personal competence between
the Bishops would be patent to the world, and
votes would be weighed as well as counted.
It may be observed that the circumstances in
which the Bishops are appointed to their office

246 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vii

vary so widely that a mere counting of episcopal
votes, as if one episcopal vote were as good as
another, is peculiarly unfortunate. A missionary
Bishop has to be chosen for reasons which have
no special relevance to the case of a Bishop in
England. Physical vigour and great ardour of
devotion are indispensable in the one case;
there are other qualities which might seem not
less indispensable in the other. Zeal is rarely
allied with learning, dispassionateness, and the
love of justice. These, however, are the primary
requisites of a sound judgment when such ques-
tions as those which engage the attention of a
Lambeth Conference are being discussed.

Not only is the educative value of the debates
lost by secrecy, and the minority prejudiced
by being either ignored altogether or judged
only in that particular wherein they are weakest
— viz., number of votes — but the necessity of
maintaining the appearance of unanimity among
the Bishops compels the adoption of vague
and general language with respect to subjects
on which specific direction is the principal need
of the Church. The unconfessed assumption
of an assembly of Bishops is one which assumes
a supernatural direction of their counsels, and
tacitly claims a Divine authority for their decisions.
Both the assumption and the claim are remote
from modern ways of thinking, and command

VII THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE 247

no real acceptance outside small coteries of
religious people. But the existence of the assump-
tion and the suggestion of the claim create a
prejudice against the pronouncements of the
Conference which is unfortunate and unfair.

It is also always to be borne in mind that the
deep division which has marked the Church of
England since the Reformation, and which
really gives the key to much that is perplexing in
English religion, has extended itself throughout
all the Daughter Churches. This division, not
the anomalies and abuses of its ancient establish-
ment, lies at the root of the disciplinary confusion
of the Mother Church. An American or Colonial
Bishop is free from the special embarrassments of
the situation in England, but he is as familiar with
the difference between the " Catholic " and the
'' Protestant " interpretations of Anglicanism,
and as perplexed by the practical paradoxes
which they occasion, as any English Bishop.
The missionary efforts of the Anglican Com-
munion are shadowed bv the same sinister schism.
It is reflected in the distinctive principles and
methods of the two great missionary societies
which are mainly responsible for the organization
and maintenance of foreign missions. While
the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
expresses '' High " Church views, the Church
Missionary Society is the glory of the '' Low "

248 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vii

Church party. There are dioceses where Angli-
canism is avowedly and aggressively "Catholic";
there are also dioceses where Anglicanism is as
avowedly and aggressively " Protestant." In
fact, the original sin of Anglicanism is everywhere
disclosed in an incorrigible incoherence.

Accordingly, the method of the Lambeth
Conference — its maintenance of apparent unani-
mity by the use of vague and ambiguous language,
which is capable of different and even conflicting
interpretations — is particularly unfortunate, for
it really deceives nobody who is cognizant of the
actual state of affairs within the Anglican Com-
munion, and must tend to empty of practical
value all the official pronouncements of the
united Anglican Episcopate. It may fairly be
questioned whether the Anglican Church would
not, in the long run, gain by the adoption of a
more normal and candid procedure; if more
public attention would not be secured by resolu-
tions which, although not always or often unani-
mous, and always preceded by open debate
in which the play of conflicting tendencies and
opinions within the Episcopate would perforce be
frankly disclosed, would yet be felt to express
a definite and deliberate verdict on the subjects
under discussion. Unanimity ceases to be mor-
ally impressive when it appears to be the result
of calculating diplomacy.

VII THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE 249

HI. Effect of the Conference.

The mere assembling together of the Anglican
Bishops every ten years must have important
effects on the development of Anglicanism. It
is no slight matter that the Bishops should
become personally acquainted with one another.
Thereby the hierarchy is knit together by a
thousand links of friendship and association.
It must be serviceable to religion that the Bishops
should exchange ideas, should bring their distinc-
tive experiences into the common stock, and
should unite in solemn acts of penitence and
worship. The Anglican Communion spread over
the world, existing under so many differing
conditions, subjected to so many estranging
influences, finds agreement beyond its hopes,
grows conscious of an inner unity which tran-
scends its divisions, and glows with the holy
ardour of a common enthusiasm. All this is
wholly advantageous to religion. There are,
however, some other effects of these decennial
Conferences with respect to which it is not easy
to feel so confident.

The Lambeth Conference is a purely episcopal
body. Its very constitution tacitly assumes a
theory of the episcopal office which requires
for its justification presuppositions more intelli-
gible and satisfying in the fourth century than

250 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vii

in the twentieth. An assembly of Bishops,
moreover, is under strong temptation to magnify
the episcopal office, and it is the less likely to
resist this temptation if many of its members
are passionately convinced of their apostolical
descent, and if it must needs adopt the language
and style of a former age in which the Divine
Authority of Bishops was the assumption of
ecclesiastical life. The actual character of the
Bishops as ex officio the sole representatives of
their Churches confirms them in an exalted
theory of their inherent authority. Moreover,
it is the fact that, throughout the missionary
area, the Bishop's position towards the native
clergy and the mass of his converts is closely
akin to that held by the founders and organizers
of European Christianity. He brings the Gospel;
he is its sole interpreter; his will is the final
authority in all matters of doctrine and discipline ;
he is the sole link between the infant community
and the Christian society from which he received
his commission. His supremacy in the Church
has its real and sufficient justification in the
magnitude of the services which he renders, and
is alone competent to render. The Episcopate,
in fact, repeats the history of its earliest phase,
and, as in the primitive ages which witnessed
the original development of the Bishop's auto-
cracy, proves itself the indispensable instrument

VII THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE 251

of unity and discipline. All this, however, has no
parallel outside the missionary sphere. Within
the " home Churches " the autocracy of the
Bishop is wholly based on a theory which no
longer commands the acceptance of historical
students, forms no part of the living beliefs of
ordinary Christians, and conflicts with the prin-
ciples and procedures of the Reformation. " The
almost superstitious glorification of the episcopal
office " which, in the judgment of the Dean of
S. Paul's, marked the action of the last Lambeth
Conference, " depends mainly on a mere legend,
the Apostolic Succession." That legend was the
first principle of the Oxford Movement, and
determines the ecclesiastical policy of the whole
Anglo- Catholic party; but it is none the less
an insecure foundation on which to base the
organization of the Anglican Communion.

This exalted episcopalianism is not to be
reconciled with the English Establishment, which
is certainly affected unfavourably by the Lambeth
Conferences. In an assembly of Bishops, most
of whom represent non- established or dises-
tablished Churches the English Bishops hold
an anomalous and embarrassed position. They
know that their own official action must be
determined by considerations which do not
affect the majority of the Bishops, and indeed
are hardly intelligible to them. It is indeed a

252 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vii

tacit understanding — to quote the words of the
Bishop of Pittsburgh, U.S.A., to Archbishop
Tait — that " no topic should be introduced
which must ehcit discussions on the State relations
of the Church of England," but the difficulty is
inherent in the situation. Everything speci-
fically English has to be ignored, or apologized
for, or explained away. The non- English Bishops
adopt inevitably the tone of men who are
spiritually better placed as being less shackled
by secular law, and less subordinated to public
claims. In the Conference there is nothing to
remind them of those other shackles less easy
to define and to denounce, which yet impinge
on their spiritual liberty in manner and measure
far more serious than the light yoke of the
national Establishment. Insensibly the assump-
tions of the English Reformation are let slip
from mind, and the English Bishops give in
their adhesion to an ideal of the Church which
is described as " Catholic," and based on the
precedents of " the undivided Church " of the
first centuries. The definition of Anglicanism is
becoming doubtful, for the official standards of
the National Church of England are being
found inadequate and unsatisfactory by Anglican
Churches which are in no sense national, and
which are necessarily destitute of the historic
background which explains the English situation.

VII THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE 253

Certainly the official standards of the Church
of England never contemplated an episcopal
federation spread over the world, standing in
no formal relation to the civil governments,
and claiming a complete autonomy. They are
not well suited to the needs of an international
society. In this connection the Thirty- Sixth
Resolution of the recent Lambeth Conference
is highly significant. It deals with the case of
Missionary Churches, and runs as follows :

" While maintaining the authority of the Book of
Common Prayer as the Anglican standard of doctrine
and practice, we consider that liturgical uniformity
should not be regarded as a necessity throughout the
Churches of the Anglican Communion. The conditions
of the Church in many parts of the mission field render
inapplicable the retention of that book as the one fixed
liturgical model."

It will be observed that the Book of Common
Prayer is described as " the Anglican standard
of doctrine and practice." No mention is made
of the Thirty- nine Articles, which hold the first
place in the subscription required from English
clergymen at their ordination, and which have
been for more than three hundred years the
Anglican standard of doctrine. The Prayer- Book
was not designed to serve as a standard of doctrine,
and certainly is ill adapted for the purpose.
As a manual of worship and as a directory of

254 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vii

clerical conduct it is incomparable, but its very-
excellence for these purposes disqualifies it for any
other. It does indeed include the three Creeds,
which are the venerable summaries of funda-
mental Christian belief; but precisely because
they are such they are not specifically Anglican.
The doctrine of the Prayer- Book must be mainly
inferred from its language, but that language is
devotional, and has no reference to many of
the important subjects which can hardly be
omitted from any doctrinal standard designed
to define and justify the Anglican version of
Christianity.

The Anglican version of Christianity claims
to be the true version as Anglicans are able to
see it. Only as being true can that version
vindicate a title to Christian acceptance. None
of the distinctive features of historic Anglicanism
is disclosed in the Book of Common Prayer save
the use of the vernacular in public worship, the
retention of liturgical forms, and the theory of
national reformation stated in the Prefaces.
A Roman Catholic or a Protestant might find
nothing in the book to disallow his distinctive
beliefs. Even if the Ordinal be looked upon as
part of the Prayer- Book, it makes no difference,
for its justification of the retention of episcopacy
includes no theory of the ministry. In a Christ-
endom divided deeply into sections on questions

VII THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE 255

of fundamental belief, no Church can really
dispense with a more precise and sufficient
standard of doctrine than that which the Prayer-
Book provides. It may indeed be fairly admitted
that the Thirty- nine Articles — a highly contro-
versial document drawn up 350 years ago with
direct reference to an ecclesiastical situation
which has passed away, and with respect to
issues which are wholly or partially obsolete —
is obviously unsuitable for modern use even
in the Church of England, and a fortiori in other
Anglican Churches. To Asiatic and African
converts it must be tiresome, unedifying, and
hardly intelligible. None the less, if Anglicanism
is to retain a distinctive character, and to justify
its separate existence in the future, the Anglican
Communion in England and elsewhere cannot
dispense with a doctrinal confession which in
the modern world shall serve the purpose which
the Thirty- nine Articles have served in the past,
and (though with obvious defects) still serve in
the present.

It may fairly be supposed that the Bishops in
adopting that Resolution did not look beyond the
immediate necessities of the Mission Churches,
and, therefore, it is not necessary to assume
that the proper implications of an abandon-
ment of the Thirty- nine Articles were perceived
or intended. Yet it is proper to point out

2S6 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vii

that the abandonment of the historic standard
of AngHcan doctrine would destroy the via
inedia^ the middle way of moderate reformation,
which the English Reformers pursued. For it
would cut out of the Anglican system its speci-
fically Protestant elements, would sever the
link which unites the Church of England doctrin-
ally with the other Reformed Churches, and
would render indefinitely more difficult any re-
conciliation with the non- episcopal Communions.

The sixth Lambeth Conference was dominated
by the conviction that the paramount need of
the world at the present time is the recovery
of the visible unity of the Christian Church.
This conviction finds expression in the nobly
conceived Afpeal to all Christian People^ which
will wake a response in every genuine Christian's
mind.

The appeal opens with a definition of the
visible Church which disallows all the narrower
limits of denominational history :

" We acknowledge all those who believe in our Lord
Jesus Christ and have been baptized into the name of
the Holy Trinity, as sharing with us membership in the
universal Church of Christ which is His Body."

Thus the Bishops repudiate the arrogant
assumption which has been implicit in so many
appeals for unity, and which never fails to render

VII THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE 257

them of none effect. They do not address
themselves to those who are without the visible
Church, but to those who are within. Schism,
they suggest, is not the mark of some sections
only of the Christian family, but the common
calamity of all. It is on the basis of this frank
recognition of membership that they proceed to
consider the unhappy divisions of Christendom :

" We believe that the Holy Spirit has called us in a
very solemn and special manner to associate ourselves in
penitence and prayer with all those who deplore the
divisions of Christian people, and are inspired by the
vision and hope of the whole Church."

The Appeal reviews Christendom in its present
divided condition " organized in different groups,
each one keeping to itself gifts that rightly
belong to the whole fellowship, and tending to
live its own life apart from the rest." Without
passing an indiscriminating condemnation on
the historic divisions of Christendom, of which
the causes " lie deep in the past and are by no
means simple or wholly blameworthy," it is
maintained that " principal factors in the mingled
process " have been " self-will, ambition, and
lack of charity among Christians," and that
these still continue to operate. But " the times
call us to a new outlook and new measures."
In the actual state of the world a divided Church
is inadequate to its great task, the faithful fulfil-

17

25 8 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vii

ment of which was never so urgently required.
The ideal is generously phrased :

" The vision which rises before us is that of a Church,
genuinely CathoHc, loyal to all Truth, and gathering
into its fellowship all ' who profess and call themselves
Christians,' within whose visible unity all the treasures
of faith and order, bequeathed as a heritage by the past
to the present, shall be possessed in common, and made
serviceable to the whole Body of Christ. Within this
unity Christian Communions now separated from one
another would retain much that has long been distinc-
tive in their methods of worship and service. It is
through a rich diversity of life and devotion that the unity
of the whole fellowship will be fulfilled."

So far, perhaps, the Appeal will command
universal approval. The more definitely con-
troversial area is entered upon when the difficult
question of the methods by which the ideal of
visible unity shall be pursued and attained is
considered. The Lambeth " Quadrilateral '' of
1888 is substantially reaffirmed, though the
much debated fourth clause is stated in somewhat
more conciliatory language. Instead of " the
historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods
of its administration to the varying needs of the
nations and peoples called of God into the unity
of His Church," we have " a ministry acknowledged
by every part of the Church as possessing not
only the inward call of the Spirit, but also the
commission of Christ and the authority of the

VII THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE 259

whole Body." The change of language is cer-
tainly not unintentional, and seems to imply
that the form of polity in a united Church need
not necessarily be episcopal; but the practical
value of this concession disappears, since the
Appeal at once proceeds to claim that " the
Episcopate is the one means of providing such
a ministry " as has been described :

" It is not that we call in question for a moment the
spiritual reality of the ministries of those Communions
which do not possess the Episcopate. On the contrary,
we thankfully acknowledge that these ministries have
been manifestly blessed and owned by the Holy Spirit
as effective means of grace. But we submit that con-
siderations alike of history and of present experience
justify the claim which we make on behalf of the Epis-
copate. Moreover, we would urge that it is now, and
will prove in the future, the best instrument for maintain-
ing the unity and continuity of the Church. But we
greatly desire that the office of a Bishop should be
everywhere exercised in a representative and constitu-
tional manner, and more truly express all that ought to
be involved for the life of the Christian Family in the
title of Father-in -God. Nay, more, we eagerly look
forward to the day when, through its acceptance in a
united Church, we may all share in that grace which is
pledged to the members of the whole body in the apos-
tolic rite of the laying-on of hands, and in the joy and
fellowship of a Eucharist in which as one Family we may
together, without any doubtfulness of mind, offer to the
one Lord our worship and service."

26o LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vii

In thus basing the claim of the Episcopate
solely on "history and present experience," the
Bishops cut themselves free from much obsolete
and exasperating pretension which has cumbered
the pages of Anglican apologists, but they chal-
lenge the independent judgment of the student
of Christian history, ancient and modern. Nor
will their assumption that the Episcopate, alone
of all the historic polities of the Christian society,
is competent to gain universal acceptance, and
thereby to acquire the authority of the whole
Body, pass unchallenged. For the grounds of
that assumption are by no means obvious.
History, it may be plausibly argued, discloses
the practical failure of episcopacy not less
clearly than its early development, general accept-
ance, and unique power of survival. Every
existing division is, in some sense, a proof of
the failure of the Episcopate to maintain unity,
for the visible Church was once episcopal. Could
a candid student of ecclesiastical history in
Great Britain during the last 400 years affirm
that the Episcopal Church of England had been
conspicuously more successful in maintaining
internal discipline than the Presbyterian Church
of Scotland ? May it not be fairly urged that
the great heresies of antiquity, the great dividing
scandals of the Middle Ages, the intolerable
development of the papal absolutism, are all

VII THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE 261

historic demonstrations of the failure of episco-
pacy ? Or, at least, since the causes of Christian
corruption and division have been so numerous
and so strangely mingled, does not history
emphatically disallow the notion (which seems
implicit in the language of the Appeal) that
the primary requisite for recovering and pre-
serving external unity is the acceptance of the
episcopal government ? If, moreover, the ques-
tion be reduced to the single issue of probability,
might not the Roman Catholic urge with much
force that the papal polity, which has replaced
episcopacy over so vast an area, has, as things
now stand in Christendom, a better prospect
of winning universal acceptance than the episco-
pal ? The Bishops, no doubt having in their
view the current objections against Anglican
episcopacy urged by Presbyterians and Congrega-
tionalists, are careful to state their " desire that
the office of a Bishop should be everywhere
exercised in a representative and constitutional
manner," but their language remains ambiguous
until it is made clear what constitution of the
Church is accepted as truly normal. It is
difficult to avoid the supposition that the " undi-
vided Church " of the Roman Empire has pro-
vided the Bishops with their conception of the
visible Church as an episcopal federation, and
that the ideal which they perceive in the future

262 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vii

has been really drawn from the past. But if
this be the case, are they not attempting an
impossible achievement when they seek to recover
from a long distant time institutions which
have long been left behind in the movements of
history ? Even if the institution could be re-
covered, the ideas which they once expressed,
and which made their efficient working possible,
have perished beyond recovery.

Having thus postulated episcopacy as the
indispensable polity of the united Church of the
future, the Appeal indicates a method by which
the non- episcopal Communions may become
episcopal without loss of their spiritual self-
respect or corporate existence. The proposal
is thus stated :

" We believe that for all, the truly equitable approach
to union is by the way of mutual deference to one
another's consciences. To this end, we who send forth
this appeal would say that if the authorities of other
Communions should so desire, we are persuaded that,
terms of union having been otherwise satisfactorily
adjusted. Bishops and clergy of our Communion would
willingly accept from these authorities a form of com-
mission or recognition which would commend our
ministry to their congregations, as having its place in
the one family life. It is not in our power to know how
far this suggestion may be acceptable to those to whom
we offer it. We can only say that we offer it in all sin-
cerity as a token of our longing that all ministries of

VII THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE 263

grace, theirs and ours, shall be available for the service
of our Lord in a united Church.

" It is our hope that the same motive would lead
ministers who have not received it to accept a commis-
sion through episcopal ordination, as obtaining for them
a ministry throughout the whole fellowship.

" In so acting no one of us could possibly be taken to
repudiate his past ministry. God forbid that any man
should repudiate a past experience rich in spiritual
blessings for himself and others. Nor would any of us
be dishonouring the Holy Spirit of God, Whose call led
us all to our several ministries, and Whose power enabled
us to perform them. We shall be publicly and formally
seeking additional recognition of a new call to wider
service in a reunited Church, and imploring for ourselves
God's grace and strength to fulfil the same."

The sincerity and good intention of this pro-
posal are apparent, but it is difficult to imagine
that it can have much effect. It lies open to
two objections, v^hich are not capable of being
removed. On the one hand, it is conceived
in terms of frank reciprocity, but it is not really
reciprocal. For the conditions of such reciprocity
do not exist. No non- episcopal Church denies
the validity of episcopal ordinations, none objects
to episcopally ordained clergymen as such, none
has any " form of commission or recognition "
v^hich it desires to insist upon as supplementing
or completing episcopal ordination. Therefore
the proposal that, in return for the acceptance
by non- episcopalians of "a commission through

264 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vii

episcopal ordination," Anglican Bishops and clergy
would accept something analogous from non-
episcopalians, falls to the ground because non-
episcopalians have nothing analogous to offer.
On the other hand, the old rock of oifence re-
appears, since the full spiritual validity of non-
episcopal ordinations is not conceded. A validity
is conceded, but it is limited to the denomination
and guaranteed by the minister's personal experi-
ence. It is not, and must not be, recognized
" throughout the v^hole fellowship." Thus, in
spite of the noble spirit of the Appeal and its
impressive eloquence, it does not carry the project
of Reunion beyond the point at which it has
always hitherto failed. The unique spiritual
authority of the episcopal government is still
insisted upon.

A student of Christian history may well
wonder at the decisive importance which the
Anglican Bishops have again attached to the
episcopal government. For the historic schisms
of Christialiity have rarely been determined
by that issue. East and West were divided on
a point of abstruse theological speculation.
Roman Catholic and Protestant are opposed
for reasons among which the claims of the Papacy
are, perhaps, not the most considerable. Luther-
ans and Calvinists came into conflict on sacra-
mental theories. Calvinist and Arminian fought

VII THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE 265

over high matters of theology. The differences
between the Nonconformist bodies have had
comparatively little reference to organization.
The four great types of ecclesiastical polity —
Papal, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Congregational —
are more closely connected with secular politics
than with religious convictions. Always the
nominal causes of schism had but slight relation
to the governing factors. It is surely irrational
and practically unfortunate to give primary place
to what is essentially a secondary factor in
Christianity.

In view of the difficulties, moral and intel-
lectual, which attach to Christianity in modern
society, and which are inspiring " modernist "
movements in every Church, it becomes gravely
important that the conditions under which
episcopacy is accepted should be frankly stated
and fully understood. There is a danger, which
the recent history of the Church of England
shows to be neither trivial nor remote, that
episcopacy, commended and received on grounds
of history and convenience, may tend to bring
back the notions and practices with which
historically it has been associated. The attempt
to reintroduce the ancient method of authority
in dealing with intellectual issues which challenge
the doctrinal tradition of the Church will always
commend itself to some minds. These methods

266 LECTURES ON ANGLICANISM vii

seem most legitimate when adopted by a govern-
ment which claims Apostolical descent and pos-
sesses the prestige of immemorial antiquity. But
the precedents of the " undivided Church " of
the Roman Empire are more likely to mislead
than to assist the authorities of the modern
Church. Truth is a higher thing even than
unity. Of all the services which the Reformation
rendered to the modern world none was so
great as its definite preference of truth to unity.
Anything which definitely severed the Anglican
Church from the fellowship of the Reformed
Churches, would have lamentable consequences,
not merely on Anglicanism but on Christianity
as a whole. That there is a real danger of this
severance cannot be denied by anyone who knows
the strength and direction of tendencies within
the Anglican Communion.

Two interpretations of Anglican Christianity
are before the world and pressing for acceptance.
The one represents the Reformation as a lament-
able irrelevance, injected disastrously into the
ecclesiastical system of Western Christendom
three and a half centuries ago, and claims that
Anglicanism is essentially a version of the older
type of Catholic Christianity, having its true
affinity with the unreformed Churches. The
other accepts the Reformation as a critical phase
in the development of Christ's religion, and

VII THE LAMBETH CONFERENCE 267

regards Anglicanism as properly continuous there-
from, a true expression in the twentieth century
of the spiritual principles which emerged in
the sixteenth, a version therefore of the Protes-
tant religion, having its true affinity with the
Reformed Churches. I have made it sufficiently
clear that the latter interpretation appears to
me to be required by the Anglican formularies,
and to be alone congruous with the history of
Anglicanism. I think also that only as a version
of the Protestant religion has Anglicanism any
raison d^etre or any spiritual future. For this
reason, among others, I rejoice greatly at the
improvement of relations between the Church
of England and the Church of Sweden, to which
I owe the honour of being invited to give the
lectures which I have now completed, and which
the pronouncements of the Lambeth Conference
will, I trust, tend to advance. For the Church
of Sweden is unquestionably a Protestant Church
though possessed of an episcopal government.
Through intercommunion with that Church it
is not chimerical to hope that the Church of
England may recover touch with Continental
Protestantism as a whole, and thus take up
again a tradition, the interruption of which
has been mischievous both in England and in
Europe.

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